| Conservation easements are agreements that transfer the rights to use land in certain environmentally harmful ways from landowners to land trusts or government entities. The organizations that take on conservation easements are responsible, in perpetuity, for enforcing their terms. Conservation easements have been lauded as a private, "win-win" approach that circumvents the resistance to and the impermanence of land use regulation. Their use has accelerated rapidly in the past two decades, and they have become the most widely used tool for private land conservation.;Although they have largely been governed as a private approach, enormous amounts of public money are spent on conservation easements; many conservation easements are held by public agencies; and large numbers of conservation easements are created because of regulatory requirements. This has created a major disjuncture between the limited public governance of conservation easements and their huge public costs.;Focusing on six states -- California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, and Vermont -- this dissertation examines approaches to conservation easement oversight. The majority of the data for this study were gathered through semi-structured interviews with representatives of conservation easement holders and environmental NGOs, environmental regulators and other experts. A California case study further explores the benefits and limitations of current mechanisms for providing public access to conservation easement information.;There are some promising approaches to conservation easement oversight being used in the states in this study, especially in Massachusetts, Maine, and Colorado. However, overall, there are still very limited opportunities for public/government review of conservation easements; limited standards for conservation easement terms and holders; limited scrutiny of appraisals; and limited tracking of conservation easement data.;This research highlights key concerns about conservation easements -- susceptibility to abuse and the challenges posed by perpetuity -- and outlines the oversight policies necessary to address these challenges. Although conservation easements have been governed as a private approach to land conservation, they are substantially public and need to be overseen with that in mind. Without more oversight, huge numbers of conservation easements (along with the public investments they represent) are likely to be lost forever. |
