Land Trusts for Conservation in the Greater Yellowstone
Emily Biesecker
(Note: Emily was raised in Indianapolis. She graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in Environmental Studies in 2008, and returned to Yale in 2009 to complete her Master of Environmental Management at the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. Emily has spent her past summers pursuing independent research in the Philippines and Alaska. Her senior research focused on the processes of regulatory decision making for subsistence hunting on Federal public lands in Alaska. Emily's summer research was funded by the Berkley Conservation Scholars Program, and focused on assessing data collected by the Greater Yellowstone Conservation Directory regarding land trusts. She also worked closely with research associate Michael Whitfield, who runs the Heart of the Rockies Initiative.)
“Well, you can’t trust land trusts. Just out to make rich folks richer, right?”
At the first of many summer cookouts, I was asked why I’d come out to Jackson. The previous responses to my answer – “here to learn about private land conservation, to work with land trusts” – had been at least mildly congratulatory. My hostess, however, was skeptical, not an uncommon position among locals who don’t own much land. Every cause has some controversy, and the land trust community – far and away the fastest-growing branch of the environmental movement in America – has had its fair share. Think multi-million dollar tax breaks for limiting development on golf courses, made famous by a 2003 article in The Washington Post. But properly managed land trusts are essential to the future of conservation. Private land conservation is a national movement of nearly 1,700 land trusts responsible for protecting more than 37 million acres of open land in the United States. And many of the movement’s greatest gains are now in the ranchlands of the northern Rockies.
Land trusts employ politically neutral, market-based approaches to conservation. They count respect for landowners and private property rights, as well as their local focus and commitment to place, as their chief assets. Landowners in the West especially appreciate these strengths, and the region has emerged as the fastest growing for private conservation, both in acres conserved and new organizations, with rangeland protection by conservation easement as the main driver. By granting a conservation easement to a land trust, a landowner sells or donates certain property rights (such as subdivision, development, or filling wetlands) while reserving other rights (such as farming or ranching) as well as the underlying title to the land. Landowners, even those with no immediate intention to sell or develop their land, give up something very valuable and commit their families and all future owners to the limitations they set with a conservation easement. They deserve incentives for conserving their properties intact. Land trusts, with the help of the IRS, are a crucial source.
About 1/4 of the land comprising the expansive Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is privately owned. Agriculturally productive and ecologically important, private properties in the GYE are often low elevation lands encompassing rivers and migration corridors and buffering federal lands. Subdivision and development of once open, working lands are visible threats to the Greater Yellowstone landscape. Urban sprawl and rural development in the Rockies are now viewed as much greater ecological threats than cattle ranching, and environmental professionals have shifted their strategy from elimination to preservation of ranching. What might once have been thought an uneasy partnership is now the primary means of conservation in the region.
I came to Jackson because of my interest in one of NRCC’s primary projects, the Greater Yellowstone Conservation Organization Inventory (GYCOI). Land trusts are a unique, distinguishable, and effective class of environmental organizations in the Yellowstone region. One key example is the Heart of the Rockies initiative, which invigorated the land trust community without sacrificing its strengths as a local, voluntary, and discreet way to protect open space and maintain working lands. The Heart of the Rockies initiative (HOTR), coordinated by Michael Whitfield (NRCC research associate), is a model of deep, persistent collaboration, the kind GYCOI aims to inspire throughout the environmental community. Twenty-four land trusts – from Green River Valley, Wyoming, on up to British Columbia – came together not simply to initiate a lawsuit or raise funds for a single property; they joined because of a common vision for the future of conservation in the northern Rockies. Understanding the cultural need for viable farms and ranches and the ecological need for biodiversity protection, the member land trusts of HOTR jointly identify and protect priority private lands in the region.
With each major regional planning effort, beginning with the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in 2002, HOTR has expanded its partnership to involve new sectors, such as government agencies and wildlife advocates. HOTR recognizes the risks of partners who might challenge traditional allies, landowners and rural community members, but the new groups seem willing to temper their methods to correspond with private conservation aims. Although the collaborative covers an enormous distance, decision-making resides with the local land trusts most attuned to community needs. HOTR challenges the conventional land trust approach, which measures success only in funding secured and acres conserved, to engage local communities and ensure the lasting protection of functional natural and cultural landscapes. The initiative might also, I hope, challenge those skeptics who believe land trusts exist only to hand out unscrupulous tax deductions!