A Guided Tour of the Conservation Easement Enabling Statutes

Conservation easement enabling statutes serve as the internal structural frame upon which thousands of easements have been granted. As the land conservation movement has matured in recent years, there has been a corresponding interest in amending enabling statutes. This report is a resource for those in the land conservation field, including land trust staff, government agencies that hold easements, attorneys and elected officials. In certain cases, these individuals might wish to amend their state statute to plug a gap or otherwise strengthen it. In other cases, they might be playing defense, fending off a bill that would be deleterious to sound easement practices. Finally, some might simply be curious as to how their state statute compares to others.