I was making a couple of points in saying that if the land owner refuses to protect what ought to be protected, the land trust should walk away. First, being ready to walk away is always the strongest negotiating position. It doesn’t necessarily mean going away mad or closing the door. It does mean not wasting more time. Almost no land trust is likely to have enough land protection staff and volunteers and money to conserve as many pieces of land as they ought to be protecting this month or this year. In the absence of unlimited resources, time spent on a deal that’s headed toward a second-rate result is going to be time unavailable to spend on a better deal.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of saying to one’s self that since we’ve already spent months on this deal, we can’t give up now. But those are sunk costs; the aphorism of throwing good money after bad applies.

@Harry White:
Thanks for your thoughts. It’s my impression that a lot of land trusts have begun to take a more perfunctory approach (insofar as conservation values) to their easement deals than in earlier times. It’s good to hear that Neantinoge Heritage is employing a comprehensive conservation approach.

@Steven Brewer:
Thanks for checking out your dad’s revamped website. I suspect that the whole family agrees on the many benefits of locally grown food.

Maynard Kaufman has always contended that not as much farmland has been lost as is claimed. Maynard has a long history of sound thought on food production: he and others incorporated one of the earliest farmland trusts in 1976–four years earlier than the Marin Agricultural Land Trust. His reasoning on the loss of farmland issue is that much of the land contained in suburban ranchettes of 5 or 10 acres could readily be turned back to food production if the need arose. When I look at the small size of the many of the organic garden plots that are supplying lots of produce to
farmer’s markets these days, I’m inclined to think he’s right. I know of one person raising organic poultry on less than 10 acres using a paddock approach. Of course, he can’t raise as many chickens as he could sell and hopes to buy more land.

One of the problems with ordinary agriculture these days is that it’s often not local or even food. The Illinois corn may be going to high fructose corn syrup or grain for the feedlot or even for ethanol to burn in our cars. The peppers or other produce in the Salinas valley is food, but the fate of much of it is to end up thousands of miles away. It would be possible to write easements that strongly encourage cultivation of organic food for local consumption. But few land trusts are bold enough to do this. They have two pretty good reasons: They don’t want to tie the hands of the owners, and the restrictions might turn out to hard to write and time consuming to enforce.

He also makes large assumptions as to who the messenger is accusing “Steve” of being a forester and limited in thinking abilities. I guess one would expect that of a Eurocentric “white” elitist that takes the position of being more “enlightened” on natural matters than others. After all, he fails to even make any attempt to discover who this “Steve” person is to qualify his “white” assumption.

Oh, and by the way “Harry”, just so you know, I manage the Truckee River water program for the Paiute Tribe here in Nevada that runs from Lake Tahoe to Pyramid Lake. We manage it for habitat for endangered fish species, habitat restoration for riparian species, irrigated native farmlands and working watershed landscapes that dwarfs your anglo land trust’s holdings by several hundreds of square miles.

I also happen to be part Caddo Native American.

Sincerely,
“Steve”

As to the dark comment of “Steve”, above, who likes to play the “what is natural” game, ignore him. His baseline condition is “immediately post-glacial” … now there’s a deep thinker. We encounter this type of character all of the time – all too often it’s a forester who challenges what is natural by defending his overharvests with the myth that the Native Americans manipulated ecosystems … of course, he ignores the relative population density and the lack of technology, etc. etc.

Great column, Richard. Thanks.

While it should be the goal of every land trust to provide the most comprehensive protection possible, I’m not sure if you’re looking truly with all of its pluses and minuses. Obviously some land trusts with missions dedicated towards protecting particular natural areas shouldn’t accept any easement which degrades them, but for the most part, most land trusts accept agricultural land as land worth protecting, and which makes “walking away” so extreme.

After all, agricultural easements don’t mandate agriculture as an affirmative action, the landowner doesn’t have to destroy those natural areas. By establishing a beneficial relationship with the landowner the land trust may have positioned itself to negotiate an easement amendment for better protection later. However, what have you gained by “walking away?” You’ve probably soured the relationship with the landowner, achieved no measure of protection leaving the entirety of the property, agricultural or natural, open for development. The agricultural activities the landowner wanted to pursue in the natural areas of the property are likely going to be pursued anyways, with the added disadvantage that the property could be turned into a shopping mall later.

That, unfortunately, is the true extent of the pluses and minuses. We can’t afford to be absolute puritans with every easement deal. Every land trust should start from the strongest bargaining position, but, at the end of the day, an entirely agricultural easement is profoundly better than no easement at all.

A nice article bringing out many of the various issues land trusts face. I think the biggest difference here between agricultural protection and ‘natural’ lands protection gets more at the mission of the organization. Some land trusts were started specifically for farmland preservation, others for habitat, etc.

Since each organization is set up initially for a specific type of work, I am not sure it is fair to fault an organization who started as a farmland protection group for ignoring habitat protection. Sure, some balance would be ideal, but organizations might not have the capacity/knowledge to achieve a dual mission. Since these are grass roots organizations, whatever those peoples’ concern is should be the focus of that groups work.

Environmental issues are too intertwined to be meaningfully isolated, as you eluded to with how certain farmland can be habitat, but as an organization, choices must be made for the practical purpose of getting work done. While this will leave other important issues ignored, I think it is inevitable. It just leaves room for another organization to come in and fill in gaps. Aiming to achieve environmental nirvana on a property is an impractical goal for land trusts. The world is dynamic and habitat/species are always moving and transforming. We can do some work to help limit habitat destruction and preserve quality habitat, but for the most part natural processes will do what they will, regardless of any of our attempts (ie, New Orleans!). Species will die, “invasive” will move in…its all just part of a process. I once asked a biologist at a local university what they considered to be “native” plant and they said anything that existed pre-colonization. It all just depends on your perspective you choose to take.

Keep up the good work, these are important questions for every Board to consider to ensure their organization is accomplishing what they hope to in the best possible way.