Conservation Easements are a Trap! Read the fine print. Don’t sign anything.
A basic Constitutional tenet of private property ownership in America is the landowner’s right to determine the use and disposition of his or her land. This ownership gives the property owner the right to occupy, use, lease, sell, develop, and deny public access to his or her land.
Today, landowners can lose these rights simply by signing a “standard” or “model” conservation easement (CE) offered by “nonprofit environmental-friendly” land trusts, NGO environmental organizations, or government agencies unless the easement has been worded to protect the landowner’s rights.
A conservation easement is a legal agreement between a landowner and a qualified organization that restricts future activities on the land to protect its conservation values.
”A normal easement by a landowner usually grants a right to someone to do something on the landowner’s property; but a conservation easement gives away the landowner’s rights to do something on his or her own property.”
Dangers of Conservation Easements
In the Age of Information, ignorance is a choice. Click here for more information on Conservation Easements
Land Trusts exist to remove private property from production
Conservation Easements require that a qualified conservation organization (e.g., a land trust) or government agency hold the easement and ensure that the restrictions are honored. A conservation easement reduces the market value of the land because the owner gives up the potential for full development. Land trusts and environmental groups regularly use conservation easements to take control of private property.”
Read the fine print of the Conservation Easement before you sign. Click here for a SAMPLE CONSERVATION EASEMENT BLANK FORM.
Here is another sample of the Conservation Easement from the EPA
Conservation Easements are a TRAP. Don’t believe the false promises made by government agencies and environmental groups. Conservation easements are also known as scenic easements, restrictive easements, open-space easements, and development rights. Conservation Easements permanently restrict how land or buildings are used. The landowner gives up certain rights but retains ownership of the underlying property. These restrictions are binding not only on the landowner who grants the easements but also on all future owners of the property.
Background on Conservation Easements
A conservation easement is a legally-binding agreement between a property owner and a nonprofit organization – typically a land trust – or a government agency that restricts development on the land covered by the easement, usually in exchange for tax benefits for the property owner. The property owner who donates or sells the easement – called the “grantor” – retains partial ownership rights over the land but relinquishes rights to use the property for development. The organization to receive or buy the easement – called the grantee – holds interest in the property and enforces the restrictions. Conservation easements are an irrevocable transfer or conveyance of certain property rights associated with land ownership, such as the right to subdivide to a non-profit or government entity usually in exchange for tax benefits, money, and/or for philanthropic reasons.
Why Should the Public Care?
Why should the public care? For one, it’s our money that is subsidizing the Conservation Easements. Almost all conservation easements come with significant government funding. Federal and/or state funds are being used to directly fund the conservation easements.
Say NO to the Conservation Easement private property land grab. A Conservation Easement could greatly reduce the resale value of your land.
The Conservation Easement is one of the vehicles used by the U.S. Department of Interior (DOI), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), U.S. Army Corps. of Engineers, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, The Bureau of Land Management (part of the DOI), and Conservation groups to take control of private property. This Conservation Easement is what the Federal government is using to take over and to control private property. This is nothing more than a U.N. Agenda 21 Sustainable Development land grab. This same Conservation Easement lie is being used in all the federal programs in which the Federal Agencies are involved.
Please hold off until you find out what Conservation Easement does to your private property before you sign anythng. Your signature will release to a land trust the controlled “use” of land and development rights, while you keep title to the “land” and remain responsible for all costs of ownership FOREVER. This Conservation Easement contract with the land trust can never be broken, and you will end up with a piece of property that will be worthless for resale. Conservation Easement in essence reduces the value of a property to NOTHING because the property development rights are given up. All future owners of land come under this same irrevokeable conservation easement.
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Conservation Easements: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly by Dana Joel Gattuso
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Local Property Taxes
Conservation Easements reduce property value, which, in turn, will reduce property tax assessment. This reduction will then lower the property tax funds being collected by the county.
Conservation Easement Solution
Call your State and Federal Legislators and demand that they cut all appropriations for land acquisition for all State and Federal Agencies. There should be no item in any agency budget for land acquisitions. Our country is bankrupt, and the taxpayers are NOT willing to fund their own destruction.
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