Little orphan easement?

The second land trust in a small community, the Animas Conservancy never quite achieved financial stability, and in 2006, it asked the older La Plata Open Space Conservancy to take on its 25 easements so that it could dissolve. But that complex transfer has stalled: La Plata worries that it can't enforce Sugnet's two easements because it's unclear what development they allow. And the two organizations still haven't secured the $150,000 or more necessary to help La Plata take care of all of Animas' easements. Land trusts rarely dissolve, but it's likely to happen more frequently as regulation tightens and the number of groups reaches a critical mass. There's no set process for transferring a trust's easements, and it can get complicated if there are a lot of easements or if some have problems, says Larry Kueter, a conservation attorney and board member of the Land Trust Alliance, an umbrella group. But conservation easements represent a massive public investment, and people expect the land to be protected forever, Kueter says. So it's important that easements aren't orphaned: "We want to make sure there's not an abyss that these public assets fall into."...read more