Private Land Trusts:
A Better Way to Protect the Environment
2002-16
Residents of Washington state enjoy a vast wilderness and a diverse natural environment, ranging from the rolling hills of the Palouse and the serenity of the San Juan Islands to the ecological variety of the Olympic Rainforest. These natural amenities foster a strong environmental ethic in most residents.
Preserving our natural environment is an important social goal, but overuse of the traditional top-down, government approach to environmental protection has fostered a severe regulatory climate that often stifles economic growth and development. Residents want a fresh alternative -- one that can bring environmentalists, property owners and businesses together to cooperate in protecting our natural surroundings.
Over the past 20 years a new environmental movement, termed free market environmentalism, has emerged. Rather than relying on narrow government mandates, regulatory strictures and controversial court rulings, free market environmentalists are using the market to enhance the environment while also respecting basic property rights. A major component of the new environmental movement is the use of private, non-profit land trusts to protect valuable natural amenities.
This Policy Note provides a brief overview of how land trusts are being used in Washington state and throughout the nation to successfully protect productive timberland and old growth forests from development. The full study, available online at www.washingtonpolicy.org, analyzes land trusts and how they fit into the free-market environmental movement; presents case studies of existing land trusts; recommends principles that can be used for establishing a private, free-market land trust; and finally, discusses some of the difficult structural and political questions faced by land trusts.
Because government control is often cumbersome and ineffective, private land trusts play a vital role in conserving forestland throughout Washington state and the nation. Groups that are traditionally opposed to each other can embrace land trusts. Free market enthusiasts support trusts because they move power out of the hands of government and introduce business-like efficiencies into the conservation of natural resources. Supporters of traditional environmental regulation find private trusts appealing because they offer clarity of purpose and a level of predictability that is not present with government regulation.
In Washington there are 29 operating land trusts. As communities grow and development expands into new areas, land values increase, pushing up property taxes, management costs and opportunity costs for forest landowners. Land trusts offer an alternative to development - allowing forestland to remain as a productive component of the local economy and ecology, while compensating the landowner for the opportunity cost of not developing the property.
Land trusts are not new, but their success is growing as more people learn the benefits of private conservation. As more land trusts begin operation, a number of different models are emerging for protecting forestland via private means. Following are a few examples of successful land trusts:
Capitol Land Trust is a small, local organization based in Olympia, Washington. The trust was started in 1987 and works closely with the local community to protect forestland. One example from their 25 conservation projects is a fifty-acre parcel of newly protected first and second growth timber along a tributary to the Black River.
Pacific Forest Trust is a large, regional land trust that works to protect forestland up and down the west coast. Along with its forestland conservation purchases, the Trust also conducts pioneering research and education in Stewardship Forestry, which helps to protect the environment while maintaining the productive value of western forestland.
The Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, established in 1901, is one of the first land trusts in the nation. The Society owns more than 34,000 acres of New Hampshire forestland and oversees the protection of more than 72,000 acres with conservation easements.
Evergreen Forest Trust is working with U.S. Forest Capital to pioneer the use of tax-exempt bonds for conservation of natural resources in Washington state. If Congress approves the new financing mechanism, EFT will purchase and protect more than 100,000 acres of productive forestland just east of Seattle.
Land trusts across the state and the nation vary widely in their resources, capabilities, personnel and conservation interests, but a lasting commitment to free-market principles will help ensure the conservation goals of the organization are met. Some of those principles include: avoiding public funding, fostering a reliance on voluntary transactions without threat of regulatory action, enacting a permanent restriction on sale of land to the government, and a commitment to developing a productive community relationship. Failure to abide by these core principles will undermine the mutual trust necessary for a successful conservation program and distort the environmental-protection interests of the broader community.
The growing use of land trusts as a forest conservation tool is an encouraging shift away from the regulatory environmentalism of the past 30 years. Land trusts are an important part of free market environmentalism that allows individuals, businesses and environmental organizations to protect the amenities that are most valuable to them through the free exchange of private property. As Washington state's conservation efforts move forward, free-market land trusts will play a central role in bringing conservationists, landowners and local leaders together to preserve healthy, productive forests for generations to come.
Research for this paper was completed during the Kinship Conservation Institute in Bozeman, Montana, conducted by PERC and funded by the Kinship Foundation.