Work With Us to Protect Your Land
Why Preserve Your Land?
Protect the Future
When you preserve your land, you make sure it benefits people today and for generations to come.
Preserve Your Way of Life
Farmers and ranchers preserve land to sustain a way of life central to their families and communities.
Tax Benefits
Preserving land provides several near-term and long-term positive impacts on your tax status.
How to Protect Your Land
We can help you overcome potential obstacles in your path to preserving your land. In most cases, we protect land through preservation agreements, called conservation easements.
Contact one of our preservation experts to discuss how we can help you protect your land.
What is a Conservation Easement?
A conservation easement is a preservation agreement between a landowner and a conservation organization (such as the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County) that keeps land in private hands and productive use, while permanently protecting it from development. From 2010 to 2015, more than 3.6 million acres nationwide were protected through conservation easements.
The increased use of conservation easements is in response to limited
funding for park acquisition and maintenance and to keep working lands
working and on the tax rolls.
Conservation easements also offer permanent protection from powerful development pressures, something government land use policies cannot do. In Santa Cruz County, farmland and forests are currently protected by land use policies, but still face long-term development threats.
Each conservation easement is individualized to fit the property and owner’s wishes. Contact us to receive a packet of information on this powerful conservation tool.
Tax Benefits for Landowners
A conservation easement has many potential benefits to a landowner. The exact benefits depend on the details of the agreement between the landowner and the Land Trust.
Tax Reduction
May lower estate and/or property taxes
Tax Deduction
Provides a charitable tax deduction if all or part of the easement is donated
Future Flexibility
May provide flexibility for adding structures to your land
Long-term Protection
Ensures that your land is protected for generations to come
Preservation Partners
When a landowner and the Land Trust enter into a preservation agreement, we become partners in land protection of the land. The landowner continues to own and use the land and the Land Trust becomes the protector of its conservation values.
Discover what some of our landowner partners have to say about why they chose to protect their land.
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