Tax Incentive Impact Survey Results

Easement Incentive Works; Conservation Boosted by 535,000 Acres

In August 2006, Congress enhanced the tax incentive for the donation of conservation easements by allowing landowners to deduct a larger share of their income over a longer period of time. To assess the impact of this powerful new incentive, the Land Trust Alliance conducted a survey of 480 land trusts that together represented over 90% of the easement acreage reported in the 2005 Land Trust Census. Their easements held at the end of 2007 were compared to data they had given the Alliance in 2003 and 2005 to demonstrate the accelerating pace of conservation.

America’s land trusts protected 2,027,553 acres with conservation easements in the first two years with the enhanced tax incentive, 535,000 more acres than were protected in the previous two years.  That increase of 36% represents an area larger than Washington’s Mount Rainier National Park, Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park and Utah’s Arches National Park combined. 

We can’t say how much of that increase is due to the new tax incentive – but land trusts tell us it is a big factor. Moreover, the new incentive didn’t pass until August of 2006 – so its effect is actually much greater than 260,000 acres a year, and it has an even greater potential to expand as landowners learn more about it.

The number of easements held by state and local land trusts grew at an even faster pace than acreage protected. In 2006 and 2007, land trusts added over 6,000 conservation easements, about 2,000 more than in 2004-2005 – nearly a 50% increase.  The number of conservation easements completed grew in every region, but nowhere more than in the Southeast where land trusts did twice as many easements in 2006-2007 as in the previous two years.

The new Incentive was designed specifically to help modest-income agricultural landowners, whom it allows to deduct up to 100% of their income.  This seems to be working just as intended as its impact in the Midwest has been nothing short of spectacular.  Midwest land trusts conserved nearly 3 times as many acres as they did in the previous two-year period, increasing the total easement acreage in the region by 59%.

A small number of mega-easements have a dramatic conservation impact, but including them greatly distorts trend data. We made a decision to exclude easements in excess of 100,000 acres. As such, we did not include the New England Forestry Foundation’s 2005 purchase of an extraordinary 312,000 acre easement in Maine, 1,000 times larger than the average easement.

We did include the 2004 purchase of the 81,400 acre Hearst Ranch easement in California and the 2005 donation of the 82,000 acre Trinchera Ranch easement in Colorado.  Without these two large easements the Pacific Region and Southwest Region would have shown 43% and 15% increases in acres conserved on the chart below.

Unfortunately, the easement incentive will expire at the end of 2009 unless Congress acts!  Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) and Congressman Mike Thompson (D-CA) will soon introduce legislation to make the incentive permanent, so take action today and ask your Representative to be an original co-sponsor. Click here for more information.

For questions about the survey please contact policy@lta.org.