Conservation Easements

State conservation easements in the Adirondack Park marked in brown. New York State  over 780,000 acres of conservation easements (Protect the Adirondacks). 

But first, what are conservation easements? The most descriptive definition I encountered advances that; “A conservation easement typically consists of permanently enforceable rights held by a land trust or government agency by which the landowner promises to use property only in ways permitted by the easement. The landowner retains ownership and may convey it like any other property, subject to the easement’s restrictions. Conservation easements have been made possible by enabling legislation in virtually every state” (Pidot). As is the case with most legal language, the description is specific and complex while also remaining vague and noncommittal.

In the Adirondacks conservation easements serve as a compromise between state efforts to constrain the use of land (without buying it) to fit a certain image while still being productive for the owner and the actual agreement is enforced by the ADA. However, the rapid proliferation of conservation easements must be viewed with a skeptical eye in the Adirondacks. The sheer number and variety of these easements makes understanding and punishing transgressions to be particularly legally difficult. For example, it is often the case that conservation easements might restrict the number of trees that can be removed from the property each year. It would then be in that landowners rights to, so long as she has not removed more trees than allotted, to mine on the land or cause other damages that we might think fall under the spirit of conservation but are not covered in the legal definition.

While the above is a dramatic example, it is the case that small tracts of clear cut lands that fall under the numerical requirements of conservation and therefor evade ADA inspection (Protect the Adirondacks).In this case the differentiation between the letter and the spirit of the law is made clear. Conservation easements have also been extended to multiple farms in the Adirondacks but let us remember that farms can cause serious damage to the local system and should not be written off as a victory for the park and forgotten.

 (Protect the Adirondacks). 

Despite the complexities of enforcement, I think that conservation easements are still the best tool at the states disposal to preserve ecological values in the Adirondacks while still allowing its citizens to maintain a living. As conservation easements take up more and more of the park, so too must they be acknowledged as complex and in need of rigid enforcement.

Works Cited

"New Endowment Established at Adirondack Land Trust." Adirondack Journal. N.p., 15 Apr. 2015. Web. 19 Apr. 2015.

Pidot, Jeff. Reinventing Conservation Easements (n.d.): n. pag. Http://web.law.columbia.edu/. Columbia University. Web.

"PROTECT Releases Satellite Photographs Showing Heavy Cutting of Forests on State Conservation Easement Lands in the Adirondack Park." Protect the Adirondacks. N.p., 8 Feb. 2013. Web. 19 Apr. 2015.