Protect Your Rural Land with Conservation Easements

Do you want to protect the wide-open spaces in the mountains, valleys, and streams of our country, where we live, farm, hike, bike, bird, fish, hunt, and experience a host of other outdoor activities? Then consider protecting your property in perpetuity through a conservation easement.

For those unfamiliar with the term, conservation easements are voluntary, legal agreements between landowners and a land trust to permanently protect land from development. In exchange for giving up all or partial development rights, landowners gain significant tax advantages as well as the satisfaction that their land will always remain free of large-scale development.

Emily Bender, assistant director of the Blue Ridge Land Conservancy (BRLC), says this satisfaction is invaluable to many. “For many landowners, easements offer a sense of security, in knowing that their family land will remain intact and can be enjoyed for future generations,” she says. “There is often a sense of reassurance knowing that there will be open space available for farms and forests that are protected by conservation easements.”

Plus, she says, “easements also provide many protections and are customized