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How Land Preservation Works

© Kenneth Friedman

Land preservation is usually the process of using various legal ownership mechanisms to retain land in an undeveloped state. It can include acquisition of natural areas of any kind: woods, rivers, rocky mounts, swamps, fields, prairies and the like. Land preservation also can include acquisition of agricultural land used for farming (crops, trees) and animal husbandry. It also can include acquisition of land that will be converted from its present undeveloped state into some other undeveloped state, such as conversion from open field to forest or wetland.

Land preservation can be accomplished by purchasing land in its entirety the way one purchases any piece of property, with full rights of ownership. Purchase is usually done by a nonprofit land conservation organization or by a government agency. Land also can be preserved through donation to a nonprofit land conservation organization or to a government agency.

Besides preserving through purchase, preservationists can preserve by acquiring partial property rights in the form of an easement. An example of one type of easement is one in which one landowner sells or gifts to someone else the right to use a road or trail to cross one property to get to another that is landlocked (has no access to a public road or path).

While an access easement by a landowner grants rights to other people to cross or use a piece of property, a conservation easement or deed restriction restricts the landowner's options for using the land. You can understand this concept by thinking about the longstanding practice in which a landowner sells logging or grazing rights to someone. The landowner doesn't sell the land; only the right to use the land for a specific purpose. In the same vein as selling access rights, a landowner can sell or donate his or her rights to develop or otherwise change the use of land. This is sometimes called a negative easement because instead of granting the right to develop the land, it grants the right to "do nothing" by doing away with that right to develop.

An example of a conservation easement would be used in a situation in which someone who owns a swamp retains ownership but sells or donates the right to develop to an organization dedicated to preserving the land forever. This is known as selling or donating development rights. People who sell or donate conservation easements do so because they want to preserve the land but at the same time they want to earn some income from the land.