Letter from Paul Snyder
Conservation easements – July 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
Ed:
I think you just sold a lot of subscriptions to Colorado Central here in Custer County. As I pass around copies of the June issue (illegally violating copyright laws, no doubt), I do make sure to mention that those not reading Colorado Central on a regular basis are denying themselves one of life’s minor pleasures.
You identified the only serious argument reasonable people can make against conservation easements: they last forever. But as you also point out, “forever” frequently isn’t as long as we might think.
I see paleontologists in Douglas County just discovered a long dead tree that once stood in the rain forest north of Castle Rock. Had someone granted a conservation easement back then to preserve the rain forest where the tree stood, we would probably think it pretty silly today. Nonetheless, when it comes to the “forever” we talk about in terms of conservation easements, we have a good enough handle on what “forever” means to try for it.
I’m sure that 100 years ago, when Enos Mills took on the homesteaders who wanted to develop that treasure we now call Rocky Mountain National Park, someone said, “you’re tying up our future.” There was even someone in New York City 150 years ago who said, “let’s not have buildings here. Let’s build a park instead and call it ‘Central Park.'”
They, too, undoubtedly heard the protests of those who said you ought not to be tying up the future of our children.
The day may come when our descendants decide “forever” is long enough — that the land has become a wasteland not worth preserving any more. And when it does, we should trust our descendants to figure out what to do. The descendants of the generous man who donated land to the church for so long as “no Negroes were admitted” figured it out.
I’m willing to trust the descendants of those who grant conservation easements to figure out what to do when the day comes that the conservation easement no longer makes sense. But as far as I can see from here, I suspect our descendants will be pleased that we used conservation easements to save the land from too much development and that we did it “forever.”
Paul Snyder
Westcliffe