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Superb Downtown
waterfront location.
landowners—and make financial sense for
everyone. Landowners get a bucolic property, can build a small house and reap valuable tax benefits. Conservationists ensure
the land will never turn into a mall or condo
development. Businesses and investors involved in funding the preservation or land
transfer make money. It would make Al
Gore proud—a green investment.
Christie’s Landing, Newport, RI 02840
800.427.9444
Plan a getaway to
Historic Newport
HistoricInnsofNewport.com
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Walk to everything from this
historic landmark
13 Marlborough Street, Newport RI 02840
800.427.9444
find an innovative solution, creating public-private partnerships to save land. “We
wanted a program to get someone who’s
motivated to conserve land but also wants
somewhere to live and the tax advantage,”
says Story Clark, who worked with the
Jackson Hole Land Trust and now has her
own firm, Conservation Consulting. “We
needed to get those people … and in Jackson Hole we had very little access to public
WHAT’S AN ENVIRONMENTAL money [for saving land].”
GROUP TO DO? Shawn Smith, founder of Earth Asset
Until recently, conservationists had only Partnership, a Vermont-based real estate
a limited arsenal of strategies for saving planning firm specializing in conservation,
land. “Ten years ago, most lands were notes, “What these tax benefits do is they
donated, and that land was largely a gift,” bring in high-net-worth individuals who …
says David Harper of Land in Common, are doing it as much because it makes ina land consulting busi- vestment sense. Dollars
ness in Pennsylvania. and cents drive it.”
But as the price of land Here’s how these
increases, fewer Amer- public-private partner-icans are willing to just ships work. In some
donate their property, cases, landowners
because they would be like the Ungers keep
losing more money on their land and work
the transaction. with a nonprofit to
At the same time, obtain a conserva-over the past five years federal funding tion easement. The easement normally
for land preservation initiatives, like the promises that there will be no large-scale
national Land and Water Conservation development on the land, though it allows
Fund, has not kept pace—the White residents to build a home and some other
House rarely has fully funded the Land structures. The nonprofit monitors the
and Water Conservation program. James land to make sure it is not developed. The
Levitt, author of From Walden to Wall landowners receive a federal tax break, es-
Street: Frontiers of Conservation Finance, tate tax breaks and, in states like Colorado
estimates that the gap between money and Virginia, a state tax credit.
needed nationwide to preserve land and In other cases, like an initiative called
the amount available could be as high as the conservation buyer program, the orig-
$7.7 billion in the coming years. inal landowners decide to sell the prop-
One of the biggest
land sales in recent
Vermont history came
with conservation
restrictions.
Also, increasing development has erty. A nonprofit then purchases these
eaten into wild lands, particularly in the properties under severe environmental
Northeast, mid-Atlantic and popular parts strain, applies conservation restrictions
of the West. (Every year, according to the and sells them back to wealthy buyers,
Land Trust Alliance, an umbrella orga- who promise to maintain the restrictions.
nization of preservation groups, the U.S. Many of these properties, like tracts in
loses some 2 million acres of open space.) the Arcadia Brook Forest in Vermont
Many Americans, not just hard-core envi- or Peace Wildlife Sanctuary in Missouri,
ronmentalists, want to find parcels where both owned by the Nature Conservancy,
they can escape suburban sprawl. “There are so unique that they can attract great
is a sense of that urgency, that we are gen- interest from buyers.
erally losing land quickly,” says Jim Wyerman, director of communications and
development at the Washington-based
Land Trust Alliance.
In Jackson Hole, Wyo., the Jackson
Hole Land Trust was one of the first to
IF YOU CAN’T BEAT ‘EM
The Jackson Hole model has spread
quickly. In recent years, major nonprofits
like the Nature Conservancy and local
conservation groups like the Montana
