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Photo courtesy of the Partnership of Rangeland Trusts
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Preserving a way of life that benefits us all
GLENN PAULEY, PARTNERSHIP OF RANGELAND TRUSTS
Ranches are unique among agricultural activities in their ability to utilize the natural environment. Forage supplied by abundant native grasslands has enabled ranches to prosper in relatively unmodified landscapes. During the settlement of the West, ranches were traditionally established along valleys and waterways. These lands were not only the most agriculturally productive, but also the most biologically diverse. Today, ranchlands serve as critical winter range, birthing sites, spawning grounds, and migration corridors for fish and wildlife that depend upon both the private and public land base. The continuing existence and health of ranches has implications for nearly all western environmental issues, including watershed protection, fire management, invasive species control, energy development, game management, and endangered species conservation.
However, the qualities that make ranchlands attractive for wildlife and agriculture also make them an increasingly desirable place for people to live. Ranchlands are being sold and subdivided at an unprecedented rate. Studies predict that 48 million people will be added to the eleven western states by 2050, resulting in conversion and loss of 26 million acres of agricultural lands and open space to residential and recreational development.
These changes threaten the ecological integrity of rangelands as well as the viability of the family ranches and ranching communities that until now have kept western rangelands intact. Development pressure increases land values far beyond what agriculture can support, making it impossible for ranchers to expand their operations and difficult for many to pass down their land to the next generation. At the same time, ranchers increasingly are confronted by new neighbors who have little tolerance for the noises, dust, and smells that accompany day-to-day ranch operations. Low profit margins, greater foreign competition in the beef market, and the threat of increased health and environmental regulations all increase the pressure to sell out. And, as the demographics shift, supporting businesses leave, and agriculture's political base and influence erode.
Easements change the landscape of conservation
In the early 1980s, as a result of changes in the tax code, conservation easements emerged as the most effective tool to conserve privately owned ranchlands. At the same time, conservation organizations increasingly recognized the ecological value of ranchlands and the conservation opportunities that easements offered. As a result, new and productive conservation partnerships, such as the Malpai Borderlands Group, began to form. Initially, the livestock industry, which traditionally resisted most types of land-use regulation and distrusted environmentalists, was suspicious of conservation easements. By the mid-1990s, however, livestock organizations had begun to form their own land trusts to administer conservation easements.
This change in perception resulted from a shift in the internal and external pressures confronting the ranching industry. The average age of ranchers was rising into the mid 50s. More producers were facing retirement and beginning to plan for the future of their land. In some locations, land-use conversions and the resulting fragmentation of the landscape emerged as a major threat to the industry.
The fact that the new land trusts are locally focused and associated with livestock organizations provides a necessary level of comfort for many members of the West's close-knit and conservative agricultural community, who would hesitate to enter into long-term agreements with traditional environmental groups. Furthermore, livestock associations have historically been politically influential in the West. Ranching land trusts have been able to use these networks to advance conservation easement legislation with legislatures normally unsympathetic to environmental issues.
Today, there are seven ranching land trusts in the West that have an affiliation with their state livestock associations, and new ones are in the process of forming. The trusts are conducting a growing proportion of land conservation activities in the West and now hold more that 700 conservation easements on over a million acres of land.
Better serving working ranchers
Despite the success of ranching land trusts and the growing number of conservation easements, additional incentives are needed if conservation efforts are going to keep pace with the rate of ranchland loss. Under current legislation, many traditional ranching families do not have sufficient income to benefit from income tax reductions associated with conservation easement donations. At the same time, reductions in inheritance tax rates have limited the existing incentive based on reduction of estate tax obligations.
This circumstance has had two effects. First, conservation opportunities have been diminished, since many of the most ecologically significant and threatened lands in the West are owned by long-time ranching families. Second, because those most capable of using the potential tax savings are more often than not new, well-off, out-of-state landowners, conservation easements may actually hasten the conversion of working agricultural lands by providing these landowners with a competitive advantage in purchasing land. Compounding the problem are instances of abuse of the tax incentives through inflated land appraisals or excessive development following an easement, sometimes both. As a result, many in the agricultural community and the political establishment have not readily embraced easements as a conservation tool.
Despite shortcomings, conservation easements remain the most viable tool for ranchland conservation, although reforms are needed to maximize their benefits and to prevent misuse. First, incentives for entering into conservation easements should be made more equitable and based more on the attributes of the land, rather than the income of its owner. These changes would accelerate the rate of land conservation on the most critically threatened properties and provide insurance against future legislative challenge. Few state legislators would relish the thought of openly opposing opportunities to keep working families on the land, empower the private sector, and preserve the West's rural character and quality of life. In recent years, legislation has been introduced in Congress that would increase the deductibility of conservation easements for agricultural producers.
Second, conservation easement purchase programs need to be enlarged. For most ranchers, their land is their greatest economic asset. Many are looking for ways to benefit financially from the rising value of their properties without having to sell out to developers. Proceeds from the sale of conservation easements can be used to provide retirement income, purchase additional land or equipment, bring another generation into the family operation, retire debt, or equalize estates among those heirs who want to continue ranching and those who do not.
Meeting funding needs
Funding available to purchase conservation easements varies from state to state, but in general does not meet the need or demand. New funding sources and new funding mechanisms are needed. For example, a portion of Colorado's state lottery funds is available for ranchland conservation through one of four funding programs overseen by Great Outdoors Colorado. A number of western counties have passed bond initiatives that provide local dollars for conservation easement purchases. The Colorado Cattlemen's Agricultural Land Trust was instrumental in securing passage of legislation allowing Colorado landowners who donate a conservation easement to receive a credit on their Colorado state income tax of up to $260,000. In a provision especially important for working ranchers, the new statute allows those landowners who cannot take advantage of the full tax credit because of insufficient income to transfer or sell credits to someone else who has greater tax liability. Colorado ranchers can now receive much-needed cash in exchange for permanently protecting their land.
There are federal programs, such as the USDA's Farm and Ranchland Protection and Grassland Reserve Programs, which provide funding for conservation easement purchases. Unfortunately, the growing federal deficit has put the future of these programs in doubt at a time when they are most needed to conserve ecologically critical private rangelands and a way of life that serves them well.
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