Printed in the Mendocino County Observer and aired on KZYX&Z community radio.
"It's got lots of trees -- big trees -- but I don't ever want to cut any of them," said an owner of 40 acres of forestland, "I want it to be there for my kids." At the same time, he realizes that light harvesting, or thinning, could be the very thing that saves the forest from eventually being sold by his kids in order to pay inheritance taxes.
Many landowners in California are "land rich and cash poor." This becomes a problem when an older owner passes away and leaves property with a high land value to adult children. The kids are then faced with huge tax bills. Families in such situations often consider and sometimes do sell off portions of their property just to pay the tax bills.
One solution that this particular landowner is considering is putting a conservation easement on his land. A conservation easement is a legal document that restricts, forever, the kind of land management that can be done on a property. Those restrictions can be very tightly or very loosely worded.
Want to make sure vineyards are never put in? That the property is never subdivided? That trees over 72" in diameter aren't harvested? These sorts of specifications can be made part of a conservation easement.
For many small landowners, however, the cost of putting a conservation easement on their property is prohibitively expensive. There are public dollars to help landowners do this, since the government does recognize that everyone benefits from preventing forest land from being converted to other uses. But so far these funds are very limited.
In some areas there are county agencies, like Sonoma County's Open Space District, that generate monies locally that are used to help landowners preserve open space through conservation easements. This is a real win-win for the landowner and for the forest.
As land values continue to climb upwards, conversion of forests to residential subdivisions or other non-forest uses becomes increasingly attractive. Conservation easements, if we can find ways to pay for them, are one effective way to keep our forests as forests.
Clare Nunamaker is a Registered Professional Forester and member of NorCal SAF and the Forest Guild. [email protected] / 707-485-8788
