Today's Stories

May 8, 2008

Sharon Smith
Rockefeller Family Fables

May 7, 2008

Winslow T. Wheeler
Drowning in Dollars

Joanne Mariner
Torture After Dark

Col. Dan Smith
It's Lying and It's Murder: How KBR Electrocuted US Troops

Brian M. Downing
Reports From Foreign Provinces

Andy Worthington
Who are the Prisoners Released with Sami al-Haj?

John Stauber
Pentagon Propaganda Documents Go Online, But Will the Media Ever Report on Them?

Christopher Brauchli
Outsourcing Tax Collection

Nelson P. Valdés
Cinco de Mayo and Cinco de Agosto: Mexican History and Manufactured Identities

Rep. Keith Ellison
High Court Deals Blow to Voting Rights

Dan Bacher
Undam the Klamath, Mr. Buffett!

Website of the Day
Green Porno

May 6, 2008

Pam Martens
The Obama Bubble Agenda

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. is Promoting Secession in Bolivia

Marjorie Cohn
Under U.S. Law Torture is Always Illegal

Ralph Nader
America's Pay-or-Die Health Care System

Yigal Bronner
Archaeologists for Hire

Brian Cloughley
No Laws for Bush America

Jacob Hornberger
Killing Enemies Without Trial

Walter Brasch
People Who Don't Need People

Paul Krassner
An Open Letter to Michael Moore

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Running Mates from the Imaginary Plane

Website of the Day
Some People

May 5, 2008

Pam Martens
Obama's Money Cartel

Conn Hallinan
The Syrian Affair

Corey D. B. Walker
The End of Politics

Uri Avnery
Crusader Anxiety: Israel at 60

Dave Zirin
Refocusing Olympic Protest

Corporate Crime Reporter
Wiist's Crusade Against Corporations

Robert Jensen
The Selling and Shaping of Our Souls

Daniel White
What People Want to Hear About in Austin, Texas

Benjamin Dangl
May Day Raid on General Dynamics

Website of the Day
McCain's Pastor of Hate: "Starve. I Don't Care. Starve."

May 3 / 4, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Has Rev. Wright Cost Obama the Presidency?

Nikolas Kozloff
The Shameful Failure of the Black Congressional Caucus

Diane Farsetta
What the Pentagon Pundits Were Selling on the Side

Tariq Ali
New Labour is Dead

Harry Browne
The USA's Other Island: Irish Leaders and the War on Terror

Wajahat Ali
Pakistan's New Daughter of Destiny? An Exclusive Interview with Fatima Bhutto

David Yearsley
A Challenge to Jeffrey Eugenides

Greg Moses
Salamat, Riad Hamad

William Blum
Rev. Wright, the CIA and the AIDS Thing

Robert Fantina
The Rhetoric of John McCain

Fred Gardner
The Greatest Story Never Told

Dave Lindorff
Blame It On Paraguay: The Bush Family's Bad Real Estate Deal

Seth Sandronsky
Standardizing Learning

Binoy Kampmark
Brown, Boris and the British Council Elections

Howard Lisnoff
The Lost First Amendment

Daniel Cassidy
Slanguage: Paddy Works on the Erie

Bill Moyers
Shrink-Wrapping the Theology of Rev. Wright

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
John Holt / Akbar Khan

Website of the Weekend
Ed Abbey, Patron Saint of the Walker's Rights Movement

May 2, 2008

Andrew Cockburn
Secret Bush "Finding" Widens Covert War on Iran

David Isenberg
The Return of Limited Nuclear War?

Vijay Prashad
Driven to Terror: the Case of the Lackawana Six

William Blum
Spies Without Borders

David Macaray
Shutting Down the West Coast Ports: the ILWU's May Day Strike

Rannie Amiri
Is Sadr City Becoming the Next Gaza?

William James Martin
The Carter Coup

Stephanie Westbrook
As Italy Lurches Rightward, a Ray of Hope from Vicenza

Linn Washington, Jr.
A Battle Over Murals in Parisian Ghettos

Anthony Papa
How the Byrne Fund Corrupts Cops and Destroys Lives

Website of the Day
The Serota Petition

May 1, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Fed Sinks the Dollar

Behzad Yaghmaian
Blaming the Yuan for the Deficit with China

Wajahat Ali
The Dark Knight: the Real Rise of Obama

Dedrick Muhammad
Senator Obama, Please Come to Your Senses

Cynthia McKinney
Police in America Can Kill Some People With Impunity

Corporate Crime Reporter
Farm Broadcaster Fired After Ripping Monsanto's Goon Squads

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The Speech That Might Have Been

Reza Fiyouzat
Stop Obliterating Yourself!

Leigh Saavedra
Suspending the Federal Gas Tax

Tom Semioli
Hollywood Hypocrite: an Open Letter to Michael Moore

Website of the Day
Why Won't McCain Release His Medical Records?

April 30, 2008

William P. O'Connor
The Day I Lost My Innocence

Bob Fitrakis /
Harvey Wasserman
Did the Supreme Court Just Elect John McCain?

Tariq Ali
Storming Heaven: 1968 Revisited

John Ross
Bad Jazz in NOLA: Three NAFTA Leaders Sit It for the Last Time

Glen Ford
Pop Goes the Race-Neutral Campaign!

Joshua Frank
Election Season Piffle: Thinking Outside the Voting Booth

Ashley Smith
Iraq After Basra

Robert Weissman
Medical R&D That Works in the Developing World

Sen. Russ Feingold
Bush's Shroud of Secrecy

Website of the Day
Richard Nixon, April 30, 1970

April 29, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Military Option

Roedad Khan
Why Gen. Musharraf Must Go

Chris Floyd
The Torture Election

Paul Craig Roberts
The Iraq War Morphs Into the Iran War

Dave Lindorff
Invasion of the Pumpheads

Mats Svensson
Mental Barriers in Palestine

Peter Morici
Will the Fed Broaden Its Focus?

Mike Ferner
Inside American Royalty's Security Bubble

John Weisheit
Towing Icebergs to San Pedro

Amit Srivastava
China Olympics, Tibet Crackdown, Coke Profits

Website of the Day
Tom Friedman Gets Creamed

April 28, 2008

JoAnn Wypijewski
On Queen's Boulevard, the Night Sean Bell's Killers Got Off

Mike Whitney
Jeremiah Wright Delivers the Knockout Punch: But Will It Topple Obama?

Iris Keltz
The Fruiting Fig Tree: Memories of East Jerusalem

Steve Niva
The New Walls of Baghdad: the Israeli Model Surges Toward Iraq

David Macaray
CAFTA's Bloodtrails

John Ross
"Adelitas" Shut Down Mexico's Congress

Stephen Lendman
The Politics of Green Scare

Malou Innocent
On "Withdrawing Responsibly" from Iraq

Christopher Brauchli
Want to Learn the Ins-and-Outs of the Slumping Economy? Just Ask Ashley ...

William Kaufman
Michael Moore's Embrace of Obama: a Polemic Devoid of Politics

Website of the Day
Get Your Fix

April 26 / 27, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Nothing Will Get Hillary Out of the Race

Ralph Nader
A World of Hunger

Peter Camejo
A Crying Shame: the Wages of Left Capitulation

Harvey Wasserman
Making You Pay for the Next Chernobyl--in Advance!

Franklin Lamb
Will U.S. Policy in Lebanon and the Middle East Ever Change?

Wajahat Ali
Fisk Fighting: an Exclusive Interview with Robert Fisk

Mike Whitney
Food Riots and Speculators

Andrew Wimmer
Obliterate Them!

David Yearsley
Nero, Frederick the Great, Nixon ... They All Did It Better Than Clinton

Greg Moses
Chicago: the Stupid Experiment

Ron Jacobs
Walking the Lonely Road

Robert Fantina
Bush v. Carter: Let History Judge

Missy Comley Beattie
Introducing President McCain

Linn Cohen-Cole
The Criminalization of Raw Milk: a Mennonite Farmer is Hauled Away

Paul Krassner
Remembering Ruben Salazar

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Buknatski, Khaiyat, Lair, and Kowit

Website of the Weekend
Justice for Sean Bell

April 25, 2008

George Ciccariello-Maher
Embedded with the Tupamaros

Dave Lindorff
The Bitter and the Biased: How Clinton Courted Racists in Pennsylvania

Franklin Lamb
The Israeli Project Has Failed in Lebanon

Alan Farago
Hacking the Development Code: the Politics of Zoning in Florida

John W. Farley
Syiran Nukes: the Phantom Menace

Kathleen M. Barry
Some Questions for "Femininists for Clinton:" Is There Really Any Difference Between Hillary and Condi?

Mohammed Alireza
Cowboys and Iranians

Nick Dearden
Haiti and the Black Hole of Debt

Carmelo Ruiz Marrero
Why Biotech is Betting on Biofuels

Bruce Springsteen
Farewell to Danny

Website of the Day
It's Bigger Than Hip Hop

April 24, 2008

Linn Washington, Jr.
Duplicity Demeans Clinton Campaign (or When Bill Praised Farrakhan)

Franklin Lamb
Bush to Nasrallah: an Offer Hezbollah Cannot Refuse?

Jennifer Van Bergen
The High Crimes of John Yoo: the President's Executioner

Joanne Mariner
U.S. Hypocrisy and the Malaysian Guantánamo

Mark Engler
Trade Politics and the Battle for the Soul of the Democratic Party

Dave Lindorff
The Politics of Obliteration: Hillary's Monstrous Threat

John Blair
Obama's Missed Opportunities in Evansville: Did He Even Know It Was Earth Day?

De Clarke / Stan Goff
Politics is Food is Politics

Binoy Kampmark
Bowling for Boris: the Tories, Red Ken and the London Mayoral Race

Philippe Marlière
Sarkozy and the Specter of May 68

Peter Morici
The Bank of England Misses the Point

Website of the Day
Fair Food Nation

April 23, 2008

Cockburn / St. Clair
Straggling to Denver

Vijay Prashad
McCain's Mask

Paul Craig Roberts
What the Iraq War is About

Stephen Soldz
The Involuntary Drugging of U.S. Detainees

Laura Santina
Hillary: Another Feminist Perspective

John Stauber /
Sheldon Rampton
Pentagon News Networks

Dave Lindorff
What Double Digit Win? Media Round Up in PA

George Ciccariello-Maher
Radical Chavismo Growls a Challenge

Ralph Nader
Andy Stern's Rackets

John Weisheit
Rearranging Deck Chairs at Glen Canyon Dam

Website of the Day
Wal-Mart's "Cost of Admission"

April 22, 2008

David Isenberg
Spinning Saddam's Linkages

Stan Cox
The Political Economics of Greenwashing

David Macaray
Memo to the Clinton Campaign: They Are Still Murdering Labor Unionists in Colombia

Jeff Birkenstein
Playing the Opposite Game: Or Why Can't I Sell Out?

Mike Whitney
Memo to Bernanke: Enough With the Rate Cuts, Already!

Nikolas Kozloff
Bush's Paraguayan Fiasco

Floyd Rudmin
From Lhasa to Bilbao: Journey of a Double Standard

Carlos Villarreal
Why John Yoo Should be Dismissed From Boalt Law School--And Prosecuted

Ray McGovern
What About the War, Pope Benedict?

Michael Gould-Wartofsky
El Barrio Fights Back Against Globalized Gentrification

Robert Ovetz
A Fish Tale

Pat Wolff
Rightwing Power Grab in Cornhusker State

Website of the Day
Defend the Rutgers 3!

April 21, 2008

Bill Quigley
The U.S. Role in Haiti's Food Riots

Uri Avnery
The Lion and the Gazelle

Dave Lindorff
The U.S. Economy and the Costs of War

Wajahat Ali
Finding Osama Bin Laden with Morgan Spurlock

Andy Worthington
Hollow Gestures at Guantánamo

Robert Jensen
The Sorrows of Race and Gender

Ron Jacobs
Clampdown at Evergreen

Dan Bacher
The Great Salmon Closure

Harvey Wasserman
Where's George?

Danny Alexander
Remembering Danny Federici

Website of the Day
Save Our Taco Trucks!

April 19 / 20, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
McCain: What Really Happened When He Was a POW?

Patrick Cockburn
A New Struggle is Beginning in Iraq

Wajahat Ali
Zinn Speaks

Andrew Wimmer
Papal Benedictions

Rev. William E. Alberts
Jeremiah Wright and America's Continuing "Separate and Unequal" Societies

David Rosen
Texas Two-Step: The Polygamy Raid and the Regulation of Sexual Life

Robert Fantina
McCain Detests War?

Ramzy Baroud
The Politics of Armageddon: McCain's Pastors and the Middle East

Saul Landau
The No Escape Clause on Iraq

Dr. Susan Block
Raelians, Aliens and Evolution

David Yearsley
Suitcase Arias and Ithacan Jazz

Phyllis Pollack
On the Red Carpet with the Rolling Stones

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Hartz, Newberry and Khaiyat

April 18, 2008

John Ross
The Bush Legacy: Losing Latin America

Dave Lindorff
Courage and Conviction: In Praise of Bill Ayers

Dan Glazebrook
An Interview with Robert Fisk

Carl Finamore
A Look Inside the Hangars

Rannie Amiri
J Street: Do We Really Need Another Pro-Israel Lobby?

Richard Morse
A Creepy Roadblock at Midnight

Ko Young-dae
CONPLAN 8022: Inside Bush's Nuclear War Plan for the Korean Peninsula

Farooq Sulehria
A Himalayan Surprise

April 17, 2008

Michael Hudson
Hillary Joins the Vast Rightwing Financial Conspiracy

Robert Bryce
The Ethanol Apologists

Kathy Kelly
Weary of War? Don't Collaborate

Madis Senner
The Carrion Feeders' Ball: How Hedge Funds Reap Billions Off Economic Misery

Peter Morici
The G7, the Banks and GE

Ron Jacobs
Washington, al-Maliki and the Militias

William S. Lind
A Confirming Moment in Basra

James Murren
Obama's Disconnect with Small Town America

Ben Terrall
Losing Haiti

Walter Brasch
Political Log Rolling in Clinton County, PA

Website of the Day
Stealth Attack: Homegrown "Terrorism" Bill

April 16, 2008

Bill Kauffman
The Candidates from Nowhere

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Colonization and Massacres

Saul Landau
How to Leave Iraq

Peter Morici
McCain's Economic Plan: GOP Out of Ideas (But So are the Democrats)

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
Bankers Saved, Human Rights Sacrificed

Jeff Ballinger
Inside Nike's Asian Sweatshops: Squeezed Vietnamese Workers Strike Back

David Macaray
Union Strikes and Replacement Workers

Gary Leupp
Electoral Revolution in Nepal

Richard Morse
The Food Riots in Haiti

George Ciccariello-Maher
Einstein Turns in His Grave

Dave Lindorff
Letters from the Bitter Belt

Website of the Day
Surviving Prozac

April 15, 2008

Ralph Nader
The Politics of Distraction in an Age of Gotcha Capitalism

Uri Avnery
Manifest Destiny and Israel

Brian Cloughley
Arrogant Lies

David Price
Outrageous Pre-Tour de France Ban

Joe Bageant
Bitter America: Media Shit Storms and Heartland Reality

Steve Early
The Purple Punch-Out in Dearborn

Mats Svensson
To Create Something from Nothing: the Making of a Palestinian State

Michael Donnelly
Dead-Eye Hil and the Elitist

April Howard /
Benjamin Dangl
Dissecting the Politics of Paraguay's Next President

Laray Polk
Let's Not Put the Torch in a Bubble

Charles Modiano
What Does a Woman Have to Do to Get on the Cover of Sports Illustrated?

Website of the Day
The $3 Trillion Shopping Spree

April 14, 2008

Carl Finamore
Airline Deregulation Makes a Hard Landing

Michael Hudson
A Trillion Dollar Rescue for Wall Street Gamblers

M. Shahid Alam
Hizbullah's Big Win: Has Israel Finally Met Its Match?

Patrick Cockburn
A Cleric, a Pol and a Warrior

Paul Craig Roberts
Petraeus Sets Up Iran

Joanne Mariner
Redition to Jordan: What Happens When the Gloves Come Off?

Martha Rosenberg
Suicide and Cymbalta

Dave Lindorff
The Bitterness Thing: Is Obama Channeling Nader

P. Sainath
Hot Messages to Sex Dancer Doom Condi's New Finnish Pal

John V. Whitbeck
On Hypocrisy Over Tibet: a Personal Reflection

Website of the Day
Spying on Environmental Groups

April 12 / 13, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Olympic Torch Toasts US Candidates

Patrick Cockburn
Warlord: the Rise of Muqtada al-Sadr

Mike Whitney
Want to Save the Economy?

David Yearsley
Film Scores and Westerns: the Stealth Cavalry of Empire

Robert Fantina
Bush's Brand of Morality

Conn Hallinan
Another Defining Moment in Iraq

Bill Hatch
In Praise of Hippies and the Counter-Culture

Ramzy Baroud
The Basra Battles

George S. Hishmeh
Back to Square One

Ron Jacobs
The New New Left in Latin America

Nikolas Kozloff
Olympic Torch in Buenos Aires

Charles Thomson
The British Prime Minister and the Tate's Tin of Shit

Alexander Billet
The Disney-fication of CBGB

Missy Beattie
Huffing and Puffing to Failure

David Michael Green
America's Jones for War

Seth Sandronsky
Education Entrepreneurs

Prairie Miller
Meeting David Wilson

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Ko Un, Ibn Salma and Greaves

Website of the Weekend
Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights

April 11, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
The Clintons and Their Sordid Colombia Advocacy

Wajahat Ali
Revenge of the Ghetto Nerd: an Exclusive Interview with Junot Diaz

Sharon Smith
Let Them Eat Ethanol!

Yigal Bronner / Neve Gordon
Digging for Trouble: the Politics of Archaeology in East Jerusalem

Alan Farago
Eating South Florida

Dave Lindorff
On Waking Sleeping Giants: Lessons for America from China

George Wuerthner
Money for Nothing? The Problems with the Conservation Reserve Program

Christopher Brauchli
Prostitutes Don't Do Funerals

Website of the Day
Animals Explain the Insurance Industry: a Health Care Video

April 10, 2008

Mathieu Vernerey
Tibet for the Tibetans!

Elizabeth Schulte
Slavery in the Fields

David Macaray
Labor Unions Will Never Get a Fair Shake

Ashley Smith
The Rise of Muqtada al-Sadr

Peter Morici
Driving Up Debt and Dragging Down Growth

Jacob Hornberger
The Military's Distintegrating Family Life

Harold Austin
Snitch or Else: Prison Officials Threaten Gang Drop Outs

Website of the Day
Hillary: the Wal-Mart Videos

April 9, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Fading American Economy

Winslow T. Wheeler
Congressional Theater: the Petraeus / Crocker Hearings

C. Hand
Why Dave Marash Left Al Jazeera

Paul Krassner
Sex and Violins

Paul Wolf
Colombian "Magnicidio" Remains a Mystery After 60 Years

Wajahat Ali
Alien Invasion!

Karyn Strickler
Lost in the Fumes: the Sierra Club Sells Out to Clorox

Dan La Botz
Confronting the Economic Crisis

Eric Walberg
The Shadow of Munich: Another NATO Flop

Robin Millenthal
Enough Already! Growth and the Tar Sands Economy

Website of the Day
Conservative Nanny State

April 8, 2008

Mike Whitney
Should Khalid Sheikh Mohammed be Set Free?

Nikolas Kozloff
Bush Bullies Congress on Colombia Deal

Greg Moses
Migrant Detention in South Texas

Joshua Frank
The Other Military Draft

John Ross
Mexico City's Urban Tribes Go on the Warpath Against EMOS

Michael Donnelly
Hillary's Western Swing

John V. Walsh
Why Obama Lost Massachusetts

Jeff Nygaard
Health, Security and Mandates

Bill Piper
Last Shot for a Bush Legacy?

Sen. Russ Feingold
Legal Representation and the Death Penalty

Website of the Day
Catonsville 9, Forty Years Later

April 7, 2008

Ishmael Reed
The Irish Black Thing

Harry Browne
Irish Peace Activist Acquitted; Deported

Uri Avnery
Tibet and Palestine

Lenni Brenner
Obama's Constitution, His Pastor and His Unbelieving Mom in Heaven

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
America Must Respect Pakistan's Democracy

Robert Fisk
Fearful Lives in the Land of the Free

Edwin Krales
Ensuring the Success of Fascism in Spain: the US Corporate Role

Chris Genovali
Vancouver Island's Dwindling Ancient Forests

Website of the Day
LA Artists Against War

April 5 / 6, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Did the Elites Want MLK Dead?

Ramzy Baroud
There are No Checkpoints in Heaven

Ralph Nader
Runaway Bailouts

David Yearsley
How Scott Joplin Had Wall Street Down

Saul Landau
Sex Politics in America

Paul Craig Roberts
The Petraeus and Crocker Show

Lawrence Korb / Ian Moss
Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a True Patriot

Seth Sandronsky
Meet America's Promise Alliance: Colin Powell's New Gig

John Ross
La Cumbia de la Doctrina Bush: Colombia Kills Four Mexican Students in Ecuador Bombing

Robert Fantina
McCain, Republicans and Family Values

David Michael Green
Back to Disaster: Hoover at Home, Tet Abroad

Missy Beattie
McCan't

Patrick Bond
Vultures Circle Zimbabwe

Dr. Susan Block
The New American Pot Dealers

Phyllis Pollack
The Stones Meet the Press

Adam Engel
The Boobus in the Lie

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Diamand and St. Clair

Website of the Weekend
Richard Pryor Goes to the Gun Shop

Subscribe Online

Why Condos Aren't Always Worse Than Cows

The Problems with Conservation Easements

By GEORGE WUERTHNER

With development pressures increasing on lands throughout the country, particularly in amenity-driven regions like the Rockies, Pacific Northwest, Northeast and elsewhere,  the use of conservation easements to preclude subdivisions and other developments has become the conservation method of choice for many non-profit and governmental organizations.

Conservation easements are an irrevocable transfer or conveyance of certain property rights associated with land ownership such as the right to subdivide to a non-profit or government entity usually in exchange for tax benefits, money, and/or for philanthropic reasons. Many people donate conservation easements because they want to ensure the landscape they love is still the same for generations into the future.

Conservation easements are voluntary, and only willing sellers are involved, therefore easements have many supporters among groups such as farmers and ranchers who generally eschew land use restrictions such as zoning and/or planning. Conservation easements can also ensure that long term ecosystem services such as wildlife habitat and watershed protection are maintained and even enhanced. In some cases, conservation easements also provide public access for recreation and other purposes.

Conservation easements have protected millions of acres of valuable wildlife habitat, wetlands, lake, river, and ocean frontage from development, resource exploitation and more. Farmland conservation easements have protected some of the best soils and farmland in the country ensuring that they will be producing food into the future. Easements can also protect community character and structure. And by limiting development, easements save taxpayers money on public infrastructure, and the other costs associated with unregulated sprawl.

PROBLEMS WITH EASEMENTS

In short, what’s there not to like about conservation easements? Many things, it turns out. Land trusts and public agencies are often quick to trumpet the additional acres they add to their portfolios each year, but are less concerned with the quality of the lands they protect (not all open space is equally valuable) or the quality of the easements that are sold as a public benefit.

For instance, there are opportunity costs that come with easements since there is usually only a limited pot of money. What parcels didn’t get bought by outright fee acquisition because funds were expended on an easement instead?

Because conservation easements are nearly always celebrated as a public good, there is little scrutiny of the specific terms of easements, nor a public review of the costs/benefits of any particular land conservation easement. The lack of public transparency in easement creation and maintenance is a potential long term problem associated with them. Though the public has a financial stake in all conservation easements, it often has no one with direct responsibility to watch-dog for the public interest.

WHY SHOULD THE PUBLIC CARE?

Why should the public care? For one, it’s our money that is subsidizing easements. With few exceptions, nearly all conservation easements come with significant government funded subsidies. These include, but are not limited to, a tax deduction for the individual(s) land owner, as well as reduced real estate property taxes for the landowner and estate. These losses in tax revenue are all made up by other citizens who must pay higher taxes to maintain services.  

Increasingly with the larger conservation easements such as those involving big timber companies like Plum Creek and other large land owners, federal or state funds are being used to directly fund the easements. Yet because these funds are often funneled through second parties like land trusts, there is little public review of the agreements and/or cost benefit analysis. Since the land owner has a direct stake in maximizing the value of his/her contribution, and thus tax breaks and/or payment, there is a tendency to inflate the conservation and land values. And since many land trusts are driven by the desire to make a deal and claim yet another ranch, farm, or forest saved from development, they are also anxious to accommodate the land owner. Though appraisals are often done by an outside agent, everyone knows the deal won’t happen unless a positive evaluation is returned.  Due to the lack of oversight in the appraisal process and analysis of its real conservation value, nearly any land can receive an easement.

Second, one of the strengths of conservation easements heralded by supporters is their ability to adapt to nearly any situation and desire. However, calling such agreements “conservation easements” tells you nothing about what is being conserved. If a land owner wanted to limit strip mining on the land, but wanted to clearcut it, such desires could be accommodated and be called a conservation easement. I admit that is an extreme example and not likely to occur, but many so-called conservation easements have very limited conservation value, and might not be the best and/or least expensive mechanism for achieving similar results.

Because there are no uniform codes or standards, the proliferation of conservation easements presents a major legal challenge to future generations since nearly every term could be subject to different legal interpretations, making monitoring and enforcement difficult. With thousands of land trusts and organizations holding easements across the country, what will happen when those organizations fold or disappear? Who will monitor and enforce easements over multi-generational time scales?

In addition, a long-term strategic plan is missing from many acquisitions. One can easily make the general argument that protecting all open space is important. However, since funds are limited, it’s critical that acquisitions serve some strategic long-term landscape plan. Some organizations like the Nature Conservancy have undertaken strategic planning to address these concerns and have identified ecologically valuable lands and landscape linkages, and use such plans to target specific regions for their work. However, most land trusts do not have the funds or the capacity to do such planning, so land conservation becomes opportunistic instead of strategic.

There is a further problem associated with conservation easements. In order to qualify for IRS tax deductions, a property must possess “significant conservation value.” Because groups often gain funding based at least partially on how successful they are in obtaining new easements, there is a tendency to go for acres whether or not the lands in question serve any or little real conservation value. Trusts and organizations like the Nature Conservancy are under a lot of pressure to justify nearly any easement as “ecologically” important. A friend of mine who once worked as a scientist with the Nature Conservancy (TNC) lost his job when he repeatedly refused to sign off on documents claiming ranchlands that were ecologically valuable when they had no significant biological or other attributes.

In an effort to inflate their numbers, TNC also counts public grazing allotment acreage grazed by livestock associated with ranches it holds as “saved” acres, even though these public lands can not be developed as subdivisions, and the single biggest ecological impact associated with many of these lands is the degradation resulting from livestock grazing. Thus the Utah TNC claims to have “protected” 900,000 acres—most of which is public land that can not and will never be subdivided.

CONDOS ARE NOT NECESSARILY WORSE THAN COWS

Depending on the terms of the easement, conservation purposes may only marginally be served. The unspoken assumption behind most conservation easements is that all rural subdivisions are worse for the land than on-going resource exploitation. Many conservation easements explicitly call for the continuation of the “working landscape” as if this somehow implicitly “conserves” ecosystem values. However, from a purely ecological perspective (which is often lacking in any analysis), on-going land uses may be worse than a subdivision.

Preservation of open space is one benefit of most conservation easements, but open space does not necessarily equate with conservation. For instance, open space is not the same as good wildlife habitat. A wheat field stretching to the horizon contains a lot of open space, but it has far lower diversity of habitat and wildlife value than most subdivisions, or even golf courses. Many on-going land uses are extremely harmful to natural systems, degrade ecosystem values, and are among the major factors contributing to the urgency for conserving land in the first place.

Of course the intensity of use and even how the land is exploited makes a big difference in its relative ecological value to the community.  A subdivision with a few homes concentrated in a small area surrounded by a large expanse of natural habitat might be better than a wheat field or a cornfield. A corn field or other similarly intensively farmed crop is an ecological wasteland consisting of a monoculture, regularly disturbed, often with on-going soil erosion, water pollution of both surface and ground water, and the application of significant amounts of insecticides, herbicides, and so on.

Ranching is often not much better than cropped land. Ranches typically replace native meadows with hay fields of exotic grasses and preempt native wildlife with exotic animals. Livestock tramples riparian areas, while streams are dewatered for irrigation.  Livestock pollutes water and are a major source of non-point water pollution. Predators are killed, and “pests” like prairie dogs are eradicated. Livestock spreads weeds, destroys soil bio-crusts, and so on. Given the much larger amount of land affected by the livestock industry, its overall ecological impacts vastly exceeds the cumulative damage done by subdivisions and sprawl.

Plus under some conservation easements, on-going land exploitation is often permitted, or in rare cases, even mandated. For instance, a conservation easement placed on forested lands in northeast Vermont several years ago—called the “forever logging” clause by critics-- the easement requires the land owner to cut timber in perpetuity. Other easements guarantee that farming and/or ranching will continue forever—both have huge ecological impacts.

This is not to suggest that most subdivisions are good and even more desirable than a worked over farm, ranch or forest. My point is that working the land isn’t necessarily the best way to conserve its ecological values as commonly assumed.

GREEN WASHING

Another critique I have of conservation easements is that groups working on easements with private land owners are frequently eviscerated of any desire/ability to criticize destructive land use practices. Land trusts need to persuade land owners to transfer to them development or other rights, and logically they are not going to jeopardize such a relationship by being openly critical of industry practices. Land trusts almost uniformly try to put a positive spin upon on-going land uses that are actually ecologically destructive, green washing activities like ranching, farming and logging, ultimately undermining efforts to change, challenge or abolish harmful practices. It is more than coincidence that a rancher or logger who has agreed to a conservation easement suddenly becomes a “steward” of the land featured in the land trust and/or organizational magazine or newsletter even though on-going activities like farming, ranching or logging may not have changed a bit.

Thus groups like the Nature Conservancy, Trust for Public Lands, and many other organizations sing the praises of the working landscape even though, in many cases, the working landscape destroys or degrades the very natural values they espouse an interest in protecting.

UNDERMINING PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR LAND ACQUISTION

Conservation easements, while a very useful tool in the right situation, can and do undermine public support for outright fee purchase of lands. Because easements are a “hidden” tax and not a line item purchase like a fee acquisition, it is easier to slip it under the radar screen of opponents. In addition, many public agencies reacting to the often hostile opposition to public acquisition of land from private property proponents find conservation easements easier to promote and complete. Nevertheless, the long term public benefit is not necessarily being served by such tactics.

Another problem conservation easements is they are used to avoid more politically volatile conservation strategies like planning and zoning. Though conservation easements are a useful compliment to land use planning and zoning, it should not be used in lieu of good land use planning and/or outright fee purchase where either and/or both serve better long-term public interests. Again because conservation easements are arranged outside of public purview and discussion, with little public transparency, weighing whether fee acquisition vs conservation easement would better serve public interest is seldom part of a public debate.

In some cases, land trusts, and others involved in negotiating conservation easements pay nearly as much for a conservation easement as it would costs for outright fee acquisition, but with much more limited public benefits. Again because there is often no public discussion about the costs and benefits of a particular easement, the public may not be getting the best bang for its buck. In many cases, conservation easements often cover lands of less conservation value and/or may permit many ecologically destructive practices like farming, logging, mining, ranching and other “working” landscape uses to continue. In such instances, it might be a better expenditure of public funds if a smaller, but more focused acreage were purchased with the same amount of money, not only protecting the majority of conservation concerns, but in addition providing public access and oversight.   

CONSERVATION EASEMENTS STILL A GOOD TOOL

Despite all the criticisms I’ve leveled about conservation easements, I still believe they are a useful tool for preserving and conserving ecological values. In many cases, they are the best way to preserve open space, wildlife habitat, and public values. However, if we are going to get the best value for our dollars, we need more public transparency and review of easements terms, more uniformity in legal terms and enforcement, and greater analysis of the costs and benefits by agencies not directly involved in negotiating the easements to ensure that the public is indeed getting real conservation value for the money it’s putting into conservation easements.

George Wuerthner is an ecologist, writer and photographer with 34 published books, including Wild Fire: A Century of Failed Forest Policy and Montana, Magnificent Wilderness and, most recently, Thrillcraft: the Environmental Consequences of Motorized Recreation.