What’s a Conservation Easement? How Do They Work? Colorado Open Lands President and CEO Tony Caligiuri Explains
Famous for its Rocky Mountains and outdoor recreation, Colorado might seem like an obvious place for conservation work—but when it comes to protecting its working landscape, it turns out, in Colorado, we’ve got options. Colorado Open Lands, now in its fifth decade of operation, applies a professional approach of leadership and innovation, finding creative new ways to protect land and water for people and wildlife. From collaborating with landowners to protect working lands, and helping under-resourced communities set aside open spaces that can help attract tourists and economic resources, to collaborating with public land managers, Colorado Open Lands has helped protect 683,373 acres of land and 3,204 miles of waterways across 50 counties, mainly through conservation easements.
Although, widely used as a conservation tool, some may not understand just how valuable a tool, conservation easements can be. We chatted with Colorado Open Lands president and CEO Tony Caligiuri to learn how conservation easements work, how they help the future farmers and ranchers of America, and what they’re looking forward to in the future.
Colorado Open Lands primarily uses conservation easements for protecting land. Can you explain what that is and how it works?
Tony Caligiuri: A conservation easement is a voluntary but binding agreement between a landowner and an organization like ours who, once the agreement is executed, actually holds the development rights for that land. But the landowner continues to own and operate that land under the terms of the agreement. Most often conservation agreements or conservation easements are agreements to not subdivide or overly develop a parcel of land. About 80% of our conservation easements are on what we would consider working lands, working farms and ranches. So most of those operations can continue uninhibited, but those properties can't eventually be sold for housing developments, commercial development, energy extraction, things like that. So it protects the integrity of the land, and it also prevents the ability to sell the water rights separately from that land, which assures that land continues to be viable as working land.
Cranes on Kester, photo credit @Colorado Open Lands
Development is a huge threat to open lands in Colorado. What are the future benefits of these conservation easements?
TC: In the history of land settlement in Colorado, a majority of what are now privately owned lands were homesteaded and acquired through the Homestead Acts. So they were chosen for the benefits of those lands for things like proximity to water, proximity to wildlife, scenic views, accessibility. Most of the private lands in Colorado are where the wildlife exists. It's where most of the waters are. It's the accessible places, and it's the best soils. So when we protect those parcels, we're basically protecting the ability to continue to grow local foods. We're protecting scenic view sheds for people who might not live on the land, but go by it every day, and especially wildlife habitat. Most of the land that we protect is either wildlife habitat or important corridors for wildlife migration. So as an organization, we really focus on those parcels that are most important for wildlife habitat.
How do conservation easements jibe with public open spaces and parkland programs?
TC: In some instances there are robust open space programs at the county level, especially along the Front Range, where they will use state or federal funds in order to acquire additional parkland or open space that's publicly owned. In many of those instances, there's a requirement that they put a conservation easement on that property so that down the road, the next set of county elected officials can't decide we need housing there or anything like that. It's sort of a belt and suspenders guarantee when public funds are used for the purpose of acquiring open space for recreation, that the land is going to stay in public ownership and recreation.
And what about places where there aren’t strong open space programs? Maybe less resourced communities?
TC: The other side of the coin is in places where there really aren’t robust public open space programs—in some counties, there's not even an open space or a parks director. Oftentimes what we would do—and the San Luis Valley is a good example of this—is we work to use federal funds to acquire privately owned parcels and then put conservation easements on those parcels and then gift those parcels to the county for public recreation. These are often places where they simply don't have the tax base to raise the money in order to acquire parks. So it's not only a benefit to a community that's generally under-resourced, but it's also a great economic development tool because they can attract tourist dollars.
Horses at SPLT's Heartland Ranch Nature Preserve, photo credit @Colorado Open Lands
How do you build relationships with these communities? Do they come to you? Or do you come to them?
TC: When you're breaking into a community, you have to spend a lot of time listening, a lot of times just being present and showing people that you're willing to be part of that community once you get your work rolling. What we find is what we call the fence line promotion, which is somebody's done a conservation easement, usually an early adopter in a community, and they were happy with it, they tell their neighbors about it, and then their neighbor calls us and says, ‘Hey, we're interested in talking.’ Once you get things rolling in a community, as long as you're doing a good job and you're being respectful, and the outcome is what people expected, then it's kind of word of mouth. We don't really solicit a lot of new projects. We may have to be a little more aggressive in marketing ourselves in a place where we're new, but once we get it rolling, it usually feeds itself.
How do farming, food production, and rural ways of life fit into all this? As it becomes harder to make a living off the land, how do conservation easements fit in?
TC: Most of the landowners that we work with tend to be land-rich, cash-poor families. A good example is a family that we worked with in the Gunnison Valley. They had worked this ranch, it was probably 500 acres, for several generations. The parents were getting older, the daughter wanted to continue ranching, but the parents had to make a decision: Are they going to sell the ranch in order to fund a 401(k) and be able to retire? Or are they going to forgo any kind of resources in retirement and then just give the ranch to the daughter? And that ranch might've made $25,000 a year with that family on it, but 500 acres near Crested Butte, that ranch was worth millions of dollars if they sold it to developers. So a conservation easement was a tool that accomplished both goals.
It allowed their daughter to stay on the ranch and continue to work it, but it also provided a tax credit and a bit of a payment for that conservation easement so that the parents had at least the ability to retire and continue their lives. Those are examples of where a conservation easement can really serve the economic needs of ranching and farming families, but continue to allow that ranch to operate.
If you put a conservation easement on a farm or a ranch, you've reduced the retail value, you've reduced the market value of that property because you've taken off the development rights. And in so many places, that's where the value of a piece of land is. It's the potential development. When you take that away, it actually becomes more affordable to the next generation of farmers and ranchers. So in many ways, conservation easements are an important tool to facilitate land transfer for young farmers and ranchers.
photo credit @Colorado Open Lands
What gives you hope, looking toward the future?
TC: The thing I love about this work is it's so tangible. We're not trying to pass a bill. Public policy has its place. Political discourse has its place. But these projects are very tangible. They're on the ground and they're permanent. They're forever. And so when you complete a conservation easement, while the political pendulum may swing back and forth, these projects have endured sometimes longer than a lifetime and they will continue to endure.
Read more about Colorado Open Lands and their work at coloradoopenlands.org.
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