Ranchers band together to resist sprawl

Conservation agreement helps Colorado cattlemen save their ranches from the threat of development.

WET MOUNTAIN VALLEY, COLO. – In this remarkably unspoiled dell, set at the foot of the Sangre de Christos and home to several century-old cattle ranches, folks trying to save their cowboy culture have a name for their valley: "Custer County's Last Stand." And for rancher Randy Rusk, the Old West, and the "New West," which in Colorado increasingly has been emblematized by sprawl, is now demarcated by a clear line. Actually, not a line as much as a green belt that soon will encompass 11,000 acres – an area equal to half of Manhattan Island – in the heart of the Wet Mountain Valley.

In a bold experiment, three conservation groups have persuaded Mr. Rusk and five other ranchers to sign a unique covenant limiting the kinds of development that they – or any future buyers – can do with the land. The conservation easements forbid the ranchers from converting their 1,500 acres into trophy homes, golf courses, and condominiums.

For the landowners, the agreement provides a modicum of assurance that their vocation will be protected from the infusion of newcomers pouring into the West, threatening the vast expanse of land they need for their cattle to roam.

The covenant marks a growing alliance between ranchers and environmentalists seeking to fight encroaching urbanization. Although a landowners and land preservationists have signed similar agreements elsewhere across the country, few other projects compare with the vast scale of the Wet Mountain Valley Ranch Preservation Program.

"Do you see right there?" Rusk asks, as he drives across the valley in a pickup truck with his wife, Claricy, pointing toward a sea of pastoral hay meadows and grazing Herefords. "The subdivisions stop when they reach our property, and then there's this big swath of open space," he says. "If ranching is going to survive, this is what it's going to take."

By the year 2025, conservative estimates indicate that Custer County will more than double in population. According to a study completed by the University of Colorado at Denver, 4,100 more homes will be scattered across the landscape, unless restrictions are applied.

In many isolated locales, ranchers are choosing to craft limitations on what can happen with their private property to stave off similar challenges of urbanization. In Jefferson County, Mont., for example, ranchers formed their own zoning district that only allows one home on every 640 acres. And in Routt County, Colo., near the resort community of Steamboat Springs, ranchers and conservationists have safeguarded 16,000 acres of ranchland. But Custer County's covenant is on a different scale altogether.

"This is as big and ambitious a program to protect ranching and the environment in a single effort as I know of," says Woody Beardsley of the Trust for Public Land, which has shepherded through the deal, along with the Colorado Cattleman's Agricultural Land Trust and Colorado Conservation Trust.

But the environmental groups' contract with six large landowners isn't without controversy. A few of the ranchers are being compensated for the easements – funded, in part by state lottery ticket sales. To some, the covenants introduce too many restrictions on the area's land use by outside groups.

"So many people from outside the community have come here and said we have a problem," says land surveyor Kit Shy. "There's a consensus here that we need to determine our fate. My only question is who is 'we?' "

But some aver that, without intervention, the cowboy way of life will be endangered. With the average age of cattle ranchers approaching 70, and few younger cowboys able to afford to pay rising operational costs and taxes on escalating real-estate values, the ranching community here finds itself at a crucial crossroads, says 34-year-old rancher Sara Kettle. Across the West, estimates are that, over the next generation, between 50 percent and 75 percent of all ranches will change ownership, many to nontraditional ranch uses. In Colorado every year, the state loses to development the same amount of land that Custer County has remaining in agriculture.

"What's happening in Custer County could be a bellwether of hope for many rural counties scattered across the West that are in imminent danger of losing their ranching heritage, which is the soul of their identity," says Ben Alexander with the Sonoran Institute, a conservation group trying to protect working ranchscapes. "It's remarkable in this day and age to have the opportunity to work with landowners on a future vision that actually saves agriculture, wildlife habitat, and scenic open space."

The covenant agreement is also rewarding for a few of the landowners. Two ranchers have been compensated for their easements. Mr. Rusk's family, including his father and son, will receive about $1 million in much-needed cash to apply to operating expenses, a huge break on taxes, and estate benefits that enable them to pass down the land from one son to the next.

But the biggest dividends are not financial – after all, he could have gained more money by selling their land to developers. For Rusk, the easement ensures that he'll remain a rancher.

"At least I know the land will always be protected. That's a family legacy that will remain long after I'm gone," he says.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT CONSERVATION EASEMENTS
by Rachel Thomas
Conservation Easements (How a property owner becomes a tenant)

Conservation easements actually are not easements at all. Easements generally imply an affirmative use of land for roads, power lines, etc. for the benefit of a third party or the public. Conservation easements actually are covenants that stipulate a negative use of the land. Conservation easements prohibit the landowner from acting in a manner that will change the ecological, open, natural, scenic or historical aspects of the land. The negative use can include obligations imposed upon the landowner. Conservation easements are also known as scenic easements, restrictive easements, open-space easements, and development rights.

A property owner must understand that by granting a conservation easement, he is not only restricting the future use of his property, he is actually conveying an interest in the property to a government agency or Non-Governmental-Organization (NGO) such as The Nature Conservancy. The conveyance of that interest results in a reduction in value of the property because it creates an unusual type of undivided interest in the property that may give rise to future conflicts and it prohibits prospective financially beneficial uses of the property.

Some examples of the actual wording in a conservation agreement are:

1) The owner conveys to The Nature Conservancy a perpetual conservation easement over and across the property. (perpetual = forever)

2) The purpose of the easement is to assure that the property will be retained forever as open space to provide for a diversity of wildlife habitat, education and agriculture and to prevent any use of the property that will significantly impair or interfere with these values. (This means prohibits prospective financially beneficial uses of the property.)

3) Livestock grazing may continue provided that it does not cause significant deterioration of stream banks, water quality, vegetative communities, or soil structure and composition. (What is significant deterioration of all these resources? Who makes that determination and what quantity and/or quality measurements will be used?)

4) The Grantee (The Nature Conservancy) has the right to preserve and protect the conservation values of the property. (This is a re-statement of 2 & 3 above and puts all decision authority in the hands of The Nature Conservancy.)

5) The Grantee (The Nature Conservancy) has the right to enter upon the property at reasonable times (not defined) in order to monitor property owner (whose status is now that of a tenant) compliance with and otherwise enforce the terms of this easement. (This gives The Nature Conservancy absolute authority over the property and the tenant.)

6) If The Nature Conservancy determines that the property owner (now tenant) is in violation of the terms of the easement, The Nature Conservancy can demand corrective action sufficient to cure the violation. If the violation has caused injury to the property, the property owner (tenant) will be responsible for all cost to restore the property to condition desired by The Nature Conservancy. If property owner (tenant) fails to take corrective action within a short time frame, appropriate legal action will be initiated.

7) All legal cost incurred by The Nature Conservancy in enforcing the terms of the conservation easement including, without limitation, costs of suit and attorneys’ fees and any cost of restoration of the property will be borne by the owner (tenant).

One has to ask, "Who would enter into such an agreement?"

Additionally, major agricultural financial institutions have discontinued the practice of making loans on any property, which has been encumbered by a conservation easement. These financial institutions recognize the risk involved in making such loans.

Because of the loss of management control by the landowner and the accompanying transfer of the management decisions to The Nature Conservancy, two dangerous scenarios exist:

1. The Nature Conservancy, through legal action, could acquire the property, leaving the financial institution without a secured asset.

2. If the owner defaults on his loan, the financial institution inherits the unidentified management standards (which could be costly), and run the risk of The Nature Conservancy applying the same legal action against the financial institution.

The Nature Conservancy, in a Nature Conservancy Pamphlet on Conservation Easements, identifies land ownership as a combination of privileges that allows landowners to exercise certain rights. Being allowed to cut timber, explore for minerals, dig a ditch, and build a house are all examples of a landowner’s rights. A conservation easement restricts some or all of these rights in order to protect the habitat, flora, or fauna found on the land.

Further information provided in the Nature Conservancy Pamphlet is that the rights the owner relinquishes are transferred to an organization or body, such as a qualified conservation organization or government body, by a legal document called a conservation easement. When the document is properly drawn, signed, and recorded in the land records, the owner and future owners of the property can no longer exercise the rights relinquished in the conservation easement.

While there may be some benefits for some landowners in granting conservation easements, those instances are rare.

Prudence dictates that every landowner considering a conservation easement carefully explore the far-reaching consequences for entering into such a scheme. The complexity of the conservation easement demands that competent legal and tax counsel fully review and analyze any conservation easement proposal under consideration by a landowner. The landowner should carefully weigh the present benefit to be derived against the long-term burdens any such easement will place, not only upon himself, but upon his heirs.

http://www.paragonpowerhouse.org/what_you_need_to_know_about_cons.htm

"All in the name of progress?"

You, and some of the others on this thread are helping me understand what's happening to the fantastic American nation I grew up in. We have so many beautiful places to acheive our American dream and "sense of place."

As I watched on television just a couple of nights ago, living in the shadow of Mt. Rainier is one of the most dangerous possible places in the universe! That mountain will inundate the greater Seattle area and a lot of Puget Sound any time now.

I grew up in a nation that has always used "housing starts" as a measure of economic progress and for good reason! I'm dismayed to find the same depressing NIMBYism here on FR that florishes in the most extreme liberal Democratic Party circles.

These Commonists in The Trust For Public Lands will soon have a USSR style "5 Year Plan" for these short sighted ranchers and will convince or coerce enough timid public policy makers that it needs to be enforced on these ranchers and especially their descendents/heirs.(It's for the Chillrun, ya know)

I can see now, how people who believe in the old concept of property ownership and control as an inalienable right are not even being supported by participants on a site dedicated to a Free Republic as once was possible under the second most enlightened document ever produced by mankind!!!

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