A To Do List for Sustainable, Perpetual Land Conservation: Reform in Conservation Easements & Land Use Law

Over the last two decades of land conservation law, the conservation community has instituted crucial supportive mechanisms and implemented new infrastructure to stabilize the perpetuity of conservation easements and their holders. In the face of extensive abuse, the conservation community now endeavors to bolster the legal framework supporting the federal tax incentive and its enforcement, while pushing back on IRS overreach. It is imperative to identify crucial tasks, goals, and stabilizing factors for the next half century. Presented here are the immediate, ongoing, and future needs in land conservation law, intended to sustain and secure perpetual land conservation as a continuing dynamic and flexible source for local, state, federal, and global protection and management of critical resources and public benefits.