An Integral Part of Life

When I was just a kid many years ago, my family marveled at “the Old Man of the Mountain,” a granite formation in the White Mountains of New Hampshire that looked like the profile of a face when viewed from the north. Settlers in the early 1800’s named it, and the state’s department of transportation uses the profile outline on state highway route signs. People were astounded when the whole formation just fell away on May 3, 2003.

How could something as permanent as a granite formation just collapse? It got me wondering about the land we all use every day and take for granted. Imagine if there were no more parks or swimming holes, farms or forests or trails. What would that be like?

I would rather not find out. There are now 389 accredited land trusts, and the overall quality of land conservation work has increased immeasurably from the first days of easement writing. The land trust community also has Terrafirma Risk Retention Group, LLC, special conservation defense liability insurance for land trusts. There is also the Conservation Defense Network of experts who help figure out responses to new challenges, and the Conservation Defense Fund to help pay for precedent setting cases. Those all contribute to the legal durability of conservation.

What about the social durability of conservation? Something is socially durable when the community accepts it as an integral part of their life. They can’t live without it. Think schools, clean water, emergency services. When those are threatened, people rise up and defend them.

Imagine if conserved land were socially durable. It could happen if people from all walks of life were connected to and directly benefited from land conservation programs and projects. If they could experience how saving land was integral to their health, the education of their children, clean water, jobs, and other issues they consider a priority.

Steven Hufnagel, executive director of the Damariscotta River Association (DRA), knows first-hand the importance of social durability. Steven and the DRA staff have been doing community conservation for years. They own a lot of land and make it available to everyone in their town. They built an ice skating rink on their property so that kids would have some place to go and have fun in the evenings and on weekends. They created a sledding hill and invited the local farmer’s market onto their property when it was kicked out of its usual spot. DRA focuses on sponsoring programs to connect kids and their families to the land. They do all this in addition to their other land conservation work.

For the past few years, there have been statewide discussions In Maine around taxation of nonprofits. A recently proposed budget from the governor would tax at 50% of the usual rate for all nonprofit properties in excess of $500,000 aggregate value per town as nonprofits, they would normally be exempt from all taxes). For DRA, paying this would have had a serious, adverse impact on their budget and limit the work they could do and land they could save.

DRA’s state senator who met with one of their local town boards of selectmen (similar to a city council, for New England towns, this is the executive arm of the government), highlighted — unsolicited — the value and benefits of the local land trusts and the risks of the tax proposal. He stood up for the land trust because he experienced the why of their conservation work — to make the communities where they worked better places to live. Not just for the wealthy landowners, but for everyone.

That’s a solid first step in building social durability.

Rob Aldrich is the community conservation director at the Land Trust Alliance.