FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Katrina Farmer
Communications Associate
603-357-0600
KEENE, NH -- The New Hampshire Land and Community Heritage Investment Program announced its most recent grant awards at a news conference in Concord Monday. The Monadnock Conservancy is one of 24 recipients statewide.
The up to $113,875 in funds that the Monadnock Conservancy is slated to receive will be used to secure a conservation easement on a working farm in Jaffrey. The conservation project will protect 126 acres — a mix of hayfields, wetlands, and forested lands — in a scenic area of town, near Mount Monadnock. The property owners, the Shattucks, want to see their family farm remain intact and not be subdivided.
According to LCHIP, this most recent grant round is expected to protect an additional 4,317 acres of land and 13 historic structures throughout the state. Prior grant funding to 187 projects has helped conserve nearly 286,000 acres of land and 109 historic structures and sites.
The Monadnock Conservancy has previously received funding from LCHIP for a conservation easement on Tippin Rock Farm in Swanzey; the state’s purchase of Temple Mountain in 2007; and easements on the Houghton Family Farm and Forecastle Timber properties in Chesterfield, both part of the extensive California Brook Natural Area stretching between Keene and Pisgah State Park.
Founded in 1989, the Monadnock Conservancy is the only land trust dedicated exclusively to the 35 towns of the Monadnock Region in southwestern New Hampshire. Its mission is to identify, promote and actively seek protection of significant natural, aesthetic and historic resources in the area; and to monitor and enforce the protection of lands in the trust. Based in Keene, N.H., the Conservancy has protected nearly 15,000 acres of forest, farmland, shoreline, wetlands, wildlife habitat and recreation trails in the Region. For more information, visit www.MonadnockConservancy.org.
Shattuck Farm, at the junction of Fitzwilliam and Great roads in Jaffrey, is slated to be protected by conservation easement with assistance from the NH Land and Community Heritage Investment Program. Photo courtesy of Monadnock Conservancy
###
The Massachusetts Land Court dismissed a law suit against The Trustees of Reservations (MA) brought by a neighbor to enforce a conservation restriction (Massachusetts name for conservation easement). The Court entered a final judgment ruling that the neighbor had no standing to enforce the conservation restriction.
“This case required a large investment in time by our staff and outside legal counsel,” explained Chris Rodstrom, Director of the Conservation Restriction Program at The Trustees of Reservations, “but by prevailing we’re now in a stronger position to deal with any other abutters to our 340 conservation restrictions that attempt to unduly influence our stewardship program.”
This decision has limited precedential value because it is a judgment in the Trial Court; nonetheless, it still is useful for any land trust dealing with a neighbor that is threatening a lawsuit. It may also have some value in other lower courts especially coupled with the Tallman decision to show how other courts have dealt with the issue.
The owner of the conserved land granted the conservation restriction in 2008 to the Trustees. The restrictions provided for a building envelope, access and utilities on the 36 acre property in a spot where a home and barn had previously stood. A year later, the land owner proposed to dismantle an existing historic home it owned elsewhere in town and move it into the building envelope. The neighbors, Frank and Jean Granara, objected alleging that the access would have to be widened to accommodate moving the house and would disturb 978 feet of bordering vegetated wetlands. The access driveway abuts the rear boundary of the Granaras’ home on a small lot.
The Trustees had reviewed and approved the landowner plans as consistent with the purposes of the restrictions. The Granaras sued the landowner, Stetson Kindred of America, Inc. for violating the restrictions and the Trustees for failing to enforce the restritions. The Granaras claimed that they personally benefit from the restrictions on the Stetson property since it increases their property values and therefore they have the right to enforce the restrictions. The Trustees countered that the Granaras’ lacked standing to sue and to enforce the restrictions and that in any event the contemplated actions are consistent with the restrictions. On joint motion of the parties, the court considered two issues: whether Stetson’s activities violate the restrictions and whether the Granaras have standing to enforce the restrictions.
The court held for the Trustees on all counts finding that only named holders in the restrictions have any right to enforce them.
“It helped to have a good conservation restriction stewardship program in place,” added Chris Rodstrom, “since we could demonstrate to the judge that our approval of the building was carefully considered and well documented.”
Elizabeth Tallman filed a case, (Tallman v. Outhouse, et. al.) against her neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Outhouse, the owners of abutting property partially protected by a conservation easement, the Rockingham County Conservation District (conservation easement grantee) and the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests (executory interest holder in the conservation easement). Ms. Tallman claimed she had a third party right to enforce the easement, and that the Conservation District and the Forest Society were failing to enforce the terms. She also asserted a right of unfettered access to the protected property, which the Court rejected, upholding the landowners' right to post against and to control public access. Essentially, she sought a ruling that conservation easement prevented her neighbors from building their home on land not encumbered by the easement, and that the easement prevented access to the residence site. Elizabeth Tallman asked the Court to order that, among other things, the easement precluded the construction of the house and access to it, and that the conservation restrictions also extended to the excluded 1.23 acres as a result of an equitable servitude.
The neighbor’s legal positions required the easement holders to vigorously oppose the assertion that abutters have legal standing to interpret or enforce easements, or to restrict or utilize easement land for their personal goals. There were other related disputes at issue in the lawsuit, but the critical matter for the Forest Society, and for the land conservation community as a whole, was the whether abutters or other third parties can sue to enforce conservation easements granted to land trusts, municipalities and state agencies. The New Hampshire statute that authorizes conservation easements does not include an express statement that only the holders of a conservation easement have legal standing or a right to sue to enforce the easement.
This was essentially a dispute between neighbors that escalated to include both easement holders. One of the neighbors had very nice land subject to an existing conservation easement. The complaining abutter tried to use the easement as a sword for her personal purposes against the wishes, interpretation, and authority of the easement holders. Voluntary settlement attempts proved fruitless. The court ruled explicitly that New Hampshire recognizes no third party right of enforcement, and further that the Outhouses’ plan to build a house on the unrestricted portion of their land cannot be viewed in any way as a violation of the easement. The court also acknowledged that the Outhouse’s use of the historic access route that crossed a small potion of the easement land was not a violation of the easement.
The Court found for the defendants on all counts and also held that the easement did not require open access to the general public. This is what the Conservation District and Forest Society sought from the court and is a very good result for the NH land trust community.
WASHINGTON, DC – Every year, one land conservation leader is selected to receive the Land Trust Alliance’s prestigious National Conservation Service Award for making a significant contribution to the advancement of land conservation. Ms. Anne Codey, an indefatigable volunteer for her local conservation community in Port Washington, New York, was presented with the award this year at Rally: The National Land Conservation Conference in Hartford, CT, on October 3, 2010.
Rand Wentworth, Land Trust Alliance President, said “Anne's tireless engagement with youth and the connections she makes with communities is the link between project implementation and its successful permanence through stewardship. It is our hope that presenting Anne with this award will send an important message to the land conservation community that we value this kind of humble, consistent service that is not always recognized but is always needed and appreciated.” He added, “We congratulate Anne on her tremendous dedication to the conservation efforts underway in this country and personally working to make a difference.”
When presented with the award, Codey said, “Growing up on suburban Long Island during the 1950's, I watched with dismay as the land where I explored and rode horses, from estates to farmland and wetlands, was plowed under and built into housing developments, universities, golf courses and shopping malls. Spaces that had been open to all for walking, hiking or horseback riding were no longer available. I decided to dedicate my time to volunteering on conservation projects to make a change in my community.”
Codey's first conservation project began in 1994 when she assumed management from her siblings and cousins for her family's 72 acre woodlot in central New Hampshire. She had become bothered by the results of previous logging by the method known as "take the best and leave the rest" and began working with a local forester and with New Hampshire Cooperative Extension to develop and implement a forest plan. The woodlot is now a certified New Hampshire Tree Farm, open to the public for hiking, fishing and hunting.
When Codey retired in 2006, she began volunteering at The Nature Conservancy (TNC) doing presentations on invasive species, and monitoring the boundaries of TNC properties on Long Island. While monitoring properties for TNC, she was introduced to Jane Jackson, Associate Director of Stewardship for North Shore Land Alliance (NSLA), and began assisting her with monitoring NSLA preserves and easements, and maintaining the trails as well as assisting with education programs for children. "Having worked with children and families throughout her career, Anne is adept at communicating a love of nature to almost any audience, largely because she practices what she preaches. She is a genuine role model," said Jane Jackson, Associate Director of Stewardship, North Shore Land Alliance.
In 2007, Codey began volunteering weekly with a horticulturist at Planting Fields Arboretum, a New York State Park, planting, pruning, weeding and learning about plant care. While working on the grounds of the Arboretum, she learned about a series of outdoor education classes the Arboretum offered to local preschool and elementary school groups.
"I had loved teaching my own children about gardening and nature. Seeing my grandchildren picking up worms, identifying birds, and running through forests reminded me how vital it is that we introduce the excitement of nature to urban and suburban children, who are far too often cut off from the natural world," Codey said.
Currently Codey works at the Planting Fields Arboretum in the education department, teaching seed germination and planting in the spring and leaf and tree identification in the fall. In addition, she volunteers for a group called PW Green in her hometown of Port Washington, NY. PW Green leads field trips for all local 4th grade classes at a Port Washington preserve. In this capacity Codey helps the children discover the wonders all around them in the woodlot and field habitats of the preserve.
“While members of PWGreen have only had a brief working relationship with Anne, it has been beneficial to both the students with whom we work and to our adult leadership. She seamlessly stepped in as a volunteer leader for an outdoor education program PWGreen provides for fourth grade students in the Port Washington School District, and she immediately captured the attention of a large group as she prepared them for their adventure as scientists and naturalists,” said Holly Byrne, Education Coordinator, PWGreen, Inc., Port Washington, NY.
A new project she's also involved in calls for working with New York State Audubon to bring their unique program called "For the Birds," which uses birds to connect elementary school children to the environment where they live, to three low/moderate income communities in Nassau County, Long Island.
Conservation needs abound all year long, and Codey has also been volunteering for the last three years with US Fish and Wildlife to monitor piping plover nesting at two sites, and she volunteers with North Shore Audubon for the Christmas bird count. “Anne loves to lead children through the natural world showing them how to reveal its wonders for themselves,” said Peggy Maslow, President, North Shore Audubon Society.
"Through my work with the Land Trusts (TNC and NSLA) I have discovered special and important places, watersheds, fields and woods that are preserving habitat for plants and wildlife. Some have been neglected, overrun by invasive vegetation with trails no longer usable, but we are working with these sites, setting goals to restore the land and make it friendly for both people and wildlife, seeing progress little by little," Codey said.
About The Land Trust Alliance
The Alliance is a national conservation organization that works in three ways to save the places people love. First, we increase the pace of conservation, so more land and natural resources get protected. Second, we enhance the quality of conservation, so the most important lands get protected using the best practices in the business. And third, we ensure the permanence of conservation by creating the laws and resources needed to defend protected land over time. The Land Trust Alliance is based in Washington, D.C., and has several regional offices. Visit www.landtrustalliance.org.
# # #
Contact: Caroline Hamling
(845) 343-0840, x14
www.oclt.org
Middletown, NY -- The Orange County Land Trust has taken an active role in advocating for farmland protection, asking New York State to honor its contracts with local farmers and restore funding for the protection of farmland in the state budget.
Over the last several years, the State of New York has entered into agreements to purchase the development rights to 64 farms in the state, three located in Orange County. The three local farms are the historic, eight generation Lain farm in Minisink in operation since 1775, and the Buckbee family’s Iron Forge Farm and the Bollenbach Farm, both in Warwick. Now, those deals are threatened as funding from the New York State Environmental Protection Fund’s (EPF) Farmland Protection Program has been reduced from $22 million last year to an initial amount of $10.7 million this year. However, with $5 million taken out of the fund this year to keep New York’s state parks and historic sites open, the fund for farmland protection is now further reduced to just $5.2 million.
“Farm families promised state funding to protect their farmland for future generations have been left in financial limbo,” said Orange County Land Trust Executive Director Jim Delaune. “Many of these farmers have put thousands of dollars of their own money into complying with New York’s rigorous application requirements, requirements such as updating surveys and getting appraisals, leaving many of our farm families scrambling to save their farms and their way of life.”
Delaune said that farm families often build their business plan around farmland protection funding, reinvesting the money into buying equipment and building barns. These funds also enable future generations to remain farming. “Without this economic investment in our farms, many will fail to make the transition from one generation to the next, and risk being bought up for development,” he said.
According to Ethan Winter, New York Conservation Manager for the Land Trust Alliance, New York State’s farmland protection program saves farm jobs and keeps valuable farmland in production. He said the program also enables farmers to reinvest in their enterprise and reduce debt, as well as provide healthy, locally produced foods.
“It is irresponsible to pull the rug on the farm families who have made commitments to conserving some of the most productive agricultural lands in New York State. As well, it is unfair to leave not-for-profit land trusts in the lurch after their significant investments and good faith efforts to partner with local farmers, municipalities, and the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets.”
Winter added “New York is falling farther and farther behind other states, like New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Vermont- states that have made voluntary farmland protection and robust state funding a central part of their economic development strategy.”
Town of Warwick Supervisor Michael Sweeton said the state budget cuts to farmland protection will definitely impact the pace at which his town will be able to protect farmland in the future. Warwick is one of the few municipalities in the state that has a voter approved real estate transfer tax to help purchase the development rights to its farms. Funding for development rights, however, is often a combination of state, county and local funds and sometimes private and nonprofit organization funds as well. “We will still have our program,” said Sweeton, “but this just sets it all back”. He said there are 12 farms in the pipeline for protection in Warwick, five of which are ready to close. He said it is unfortunate if the State reneges on its portion of the funding to protect farmland, because he feels people really understand now the importance of locally grown food and preserving open space.
For the Lain family of Minisink, selling the development rights to their 170-acre farm meant that a ninth generation of Lains would be able to continue to farm. The farm has gone through many changes over the years to remain viable. Originally a dairy farm, the farm now raises certified organic, grass fed beef and is host to a nature camp for children during the summer months. According to Deborah Lain, only four farms remain in the Town of Minisink, a traditional farming community. She called Orange County “the breadbasket of New York City”.
Said Deborah’s brother Marty Lain “Fertile farmland that is close to the population provides fresh, nutritious food crucial for our health, for strong communities, and in the most basic way, for our local and national security. If our local farmland is lost to development, we will have to depend on food from thousands of miles away and from other countries. What will we do if that’s not available?”
Here is what you can do to help protect Orange County farms:
New York State Senate: http://www.nysenate.gov/senators
William J. Larkin: larkin@senate.state.ny.us
John J. Bonacic: bonacic@senate.state.ny.us
Office of Thomas P. Morahan: morahan@senate.state.ny.us
New York State Assembly: http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/
Nancy Calhoun: http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/?ad=096&sh=contact
Aileen M. Gunther: http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/?ad=098&sh=contact
Frank K. Skartados: SkartadosF@assembly.state.ny.us
Annie Rabbitt: http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/?ad=097&sh=contact
###
]]>Contact: Rob Aldrich
Director of Communications
202-431-8848 | raldrich@lta.org
Photos available; e-mail pressroom@lta.org
WASHINGTON, DC – Jay Espy, executive director of the Elmina B. Sewall Foundation, and former president of the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, was announced today as the recipient of the Land Trust Alliance’s prestigious Kingsbury Browne Conservation Leadership Award. Espy was selected for the award for the way he has pioneered a collaborative approach to land conservation, set the trend for other land trusts, made an impact across the land conservation movement, and has served as a mentor. Espy is the fifth recipient of this honor awarded by the Land Trust Alliance to recognize outstanding leadership, innovation and creativity in land conservation.
Espy was also named to serve in the Kingsbury Browne Fellowship at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy for 2010. In his role in this fellowship, named after Boston attorney Kingsbury Browne (1922-2005), Espy will engage in researching, writing and mentoring associated with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, a Cambridge-based think-tank with a focus on land policy.
Both awards were presented in Hartford, Connecticut at the Land Trust Alliance’s Rally 2010: The National Land Conservation Conference, the largest annual gathering of professional and volunteer conservation leaders in the US.
“Having invested more than twenty years in the effort to conserve land on a large scale, I am proud to have shared in the successful conservation of thousands of acres of our cherished landscapes," Espy said. "I am honored to be a part of a wonderful community of people from all walks of life, willing to stand up and work together to conserve land that fosters healthy communities for all to enjoy for generations."
Rand Wentworth, president of the Land Trust Alliance, said: “Jay is a generous leader and philanthropist who has an amazing ability to see beyond the local level, and impart a vision for a larger good. In his role at the land trust, he gathered collaborators through the Maine Land Trust Network to conserve land on a much larger scale." Wentworth added, "With more than 125,000 acres protected by their partnership efforts, Jay was vital to keeping everyone focused and engaged in the long-term process which bore an immense conservation legacy."
Espy joined the Elmina B. Sewall Foundation as its first executive director in January 2008. The Sewall Foundation is a private, grant making foundation focusing on conservation, animal welfare and social needs, primarily in Maine. For the prior two decades, Jay served as president of Maine Coast Heritage Trust, a statewide land conservation organization. During his tenure, Maine Coast Heritage Trust accelerated its land protection efforts along Maine’s entire coast, conserving more than 125,000 acres and establishing the Maine Land Trust Network, which helps build capacity of local land trusts throughout Maine. He also led the Trust’s successful Campaign for the Coast, raising more than $100 million for conservation and doubling the amount of protected land on Maine’s coast and islands.
Espy is a graduate of Bowdoin College and holds Master’s degrees from the Yale School of Management and Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He serves on the boards of the Maine Philanthropy Center and the Canadian Land Trust Alliance, and is a former chair of the Land Trust Alliance, a national organization serving land trusts throughout the United States.
Kingsbury Browne and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy had a long history together. In 1980, as a fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Browne first envisioned a network of land conservation trusts, and convened conservation leaders through the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, which ultimately led to the formation of the national Land Trust Exchange (later renamed the Land Trust Alliance) in 1982. Browne is considered the father of America’s modern land trust movement, a network of land trusts operating in every state of the nation. Together these land trusts have conserved more than 37 million acres, an area the size of New England.
The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy began the Kingsbury Browne Fellowship in association with the Land Trust Alliance offering its first Kingsbury Browne Conservation Leadership Award in 2006. Winners are chosen from a group of their peers, honoring lifetime contributions to the field of land conservation and work reflecting the values that Kingsbury Browne brought to his own seminal achievements.
Armando Carbonell, senior fellow and chairman of the Department of Planning and Urban Form at the Lincoln Institute, said he looked forward to having Jay Espy serve as the Kingsbury Browne Fellow, as his expertise can enhance many ongoing initiatives in regional collaboration and development.
About The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy
The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy is a leading resource for key issues concerning the use, regulation, and taxation of land. Providing high quality education and research, the Institute strives to improve public dialogue and decisions about land policy. As a private operating foundation, whose origins date to 1946, we seek to inform decision-making through education, research, policy evaluation, demonstration projects, and the dissemination of information, policy analysis, and data through publications, our Web site, and other media. By bringing together scholars, practitioners, public officials, policymakers, journalists and involved citizens, the Lincoln Institute integrates theory and practice and provides a nonpartisan forum for multidisciplinary perspectives on public policy concerning land, both in the U.S. and internationally. Land conservation is a major theme of the Institute’s Department of Planning and Urban Form, chaired by Armando Carbonell.
About The Land Trust Alliance
The Alliance is a national conservation organization that works in three ways to save the places people love. First, we increase the pace of conservation, so more land and natural resources get protected. Second, we enhance the quality of conservation, so the most important lands get protected using the best practices in the business. And third, we ensure the permanence of conservation by creating the laws and resources needed to defend protected land over time. The Land Trust Alliance is based in Washington, D.C., and has several regional offices. Visit www.landtrustalliance.org.
# # #