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Time for Land Trust to Seize Moment
This Op Ed piece appeared in the May 6, 2007 Santa Cruz Sentinel
By Terry Corwin
For a generation land protection in Santa Cruz County has centered on big battles to stop proposed developments and on government regulations and zoning. These have succeeded in protecting much of our county’s beauty and n atural resources and provide us with a window of opportunity to permanently address relentless development pressures.
The next generation of permanent land protection will focus on protecting private working lands like farms and timberlands and keeping these lands on the tax rolls. The primary tool will be the conservation easement – a voluntary agreement between a landowner and a conservation organization like the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County.
Already 1.7 million acres of private land in California are protected by such agreements. Nationwide more than 6.2 million acres are protected by conservation easements – a number that grew by 148% from 2000 to 2005. Spurred by new tax incentives for landowners donating such easements to conservation organizations, the use of easements continues to grow rapidly.
The increased use of conservation easements is in response to limited funding for park acquisition and maintenance – and to the desire to keep working lands working and on the tax rolls. Santa Cruz County is a prime candidate for increased use of this conservation tool. Almost a fifth of the county is already parkland and 11 percent already built up. The remaining two-thirds is mostly timberlands (125,000 acres) and prime farmland (15,000 acres). In addition to food and timber, these lands provide us with clean water, wildlife habitat, and the open spaces that make our county special.
For now, much of the critical land is protected by our county’s well-known growth controls. But what about a generation or two or three down the road? We all know the tremendous pressures for development that lie just over the hill. Those of us who grew up in California have seen whole landscapes disappear under the blanket of suburbia. It happened in the Santa Clara Valley. It happened in Orange County. We can still keep it from happening here.
Current zoning provides us with a window of opportunity to seek permanent protection that keeps the land in private hands and on the tax rolls. This is why Miles Reiter, the CEO of Driscoll and a third generation berry farmer, says now is the time to protect the Pajaro Valley. When imminent development and the lure of vast profit are at the door, it is too late. The Land Trust is working to seize this moment to protect thousands of acres of working lands in our county.
We are finalizing now the details of the first major protection of Pajaro Valley farmland – over 500 acres of prime farmland owned by the Borina Foundation. We are in talks with other Pajaro Valley landowners who are also committed to saving the valley as farmland.
On May 3rd we are co-sponsoring a workshop on conservation easements and the new tax benefits of donating them in Watsonville. Our partners are the Santa Cruz County Farm Bureau, the Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County, and the Elkhorn Slough Foundation. The workshop (Call 429-6116 for details) is funded by the California Council of Land Trusts and the California Department of Conservation’s California Farmland Conservancy Program.
This kind of partnership demonstrates the breadth of community support for utilizing this new conservation tool. Land protection in one of the nation’s most expensive and vulnerable counties is a team effort involving government at all levels, private foundations, landowners, nonprofit conservation groups, and a committed core of individuals who fund the work of nonprofits like the Land Trust. We hope in the next few years that more of Santa Cruz County will become part of this new conservation team and this new paradigm for land protection. •
Terry Corwin is the Executive Director of the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County.
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