Land Preservation

LAND PRESERVATION

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From Skeptic to Advocate

My Changed Perspective on Conservation Easements
by David K. Langford

Publisher’s Note: The following was originally published in the February 2021 issue of Texas Wildlife and is excerpted from the preface of the forthcoming book Replenishing Our Hills by Brent Evans. The book will be published soon by the Texas A&M University Press.

The Texas Hill Country has left its mark on me and me on it for almost eight decades. My Giles family staked its claim here in 1887. Our ranch, where my grandchildren are part of the sixth generation born to this land, still bears the name of my ancestral home, which is Hillingdon Middlesex England.

I was reared in San Antonio, but spent many of my weekends, most of my holidays and every summer into adulthood on much of the 13,000 or so acres that make up Hillingdon Ranch. While I eagerly anticipated these days in the country, they were not vacations. As a member of a ranching family, we were all expected to do our parts.

One of my earliest jobs centered on the water bucket and dipper my grandparents kept on their kitchen table. In those days, providing water for the family required a trip to a nearby spring with bucket in hand.

Carrying that heavy, water-filled bucket over uneven ground taught me lessons of conservation that I’ve never forgotten. Water is vital to life. Abundant water appears through someone’s work, not magic. Water is too valuable to waste.

An uncle demonstrated to us all that wildlife like native white-tailed deer have a place on a ranch as surely as cattle, sheep, and goats. Each successive generation has managed Hillingdon’s native grass, forbs, browse, and trees so both wild animals and domestic livestock thrive.

The convergence of time, experience, and opportunities allowed me to carve out a career as a professional photographer who specialized in livestock, wildlife, ranch landscapes, and the western lifestyle. In 1985, the relationships with my clients that I forged and treasured earned me an invitation to an early organizational meeting of the Texas Wildlife Association, a group that was being put together as a voice for landowners with an interest in wildlife. I left the meeting as a member of the executive committee.

Four years later, I left an executive committee meeting with a temporary job serving as Executive Vice President; it lasted 11 years in its first act. I flunked retirement in 2001 and came back for a second act overseeing water policy development and other special projects. My second act lasted eight years. In 2011, I turned in my business cards, retired for the final time, and came back to where I started as a volunteer again serving on the executive committee. My volunteer service continues today.

As TWA’s Executive Vice President, I spent a lot of time in the public policy arena, especially in Austin. In those days, I spent a lot of time standing behind microphones in countless conference rooms in front of a mixed bag of legislators, agency personnel, traditional environmental groups, lobbyists, and the general public.

As the '80s bled into the 1990s, Texas, especially its private lands, became a contentious arena. Two little-known bird species, golden-cheeked warblers and black-capped vireos that nest solely in the cedar-spotted hills of Central Texas and the Edwards Plateau, found themselves in the headlines. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under the auspices of the Endangered Species Act devised a plan to designate portions of 33 Texas counties as critical habitat for the songbirds.

At that time, it appeared as if a “coalition” of environmental groups and land trusts were going to “save” the birds by permanently wresting control away from private landowners either by taking it or purchasing it at fire sale prices from landowners who found themselves in a financial fix. The tool of choice? A conservation easement. The goal? To manage natural resources by removing virtually all human activity.

The reaction—and rhetoric—was swift and heated. Across the state at microphones in hearing rooms and in reporters’ hands, I and others with like minds decried conservation easements as plots promulgated by land-grabbing Communists.

Against this backdrop, Blair Calvert Fitzsimons, a volunteer landowner advocate who ranched in South Texas with her husband Joseph, and I were invited to a meeting hosted by Texas Parks and Wildlife. As private property proponents, we were in the minority. Most of the invitees represented land trusts, traditional environmental groups and parks at the national, state, and local levels.

As the day progressed, speaker after speaker identified the problems that estate taxes created for landowners. Because of their experience and focus, these speakers wore blinders. While they were able to see and showcase the solutions offered by conservation easements and land trusts, the speakers only saw the application for landowners managing beautifully pristine properties. Most were committed to preserving properties with magazine cover views.

These well-meaning crusaders didn’t understand that farmers, ranchers, and family foresters, the people who fed, clothed, and sheltered us, faced the same pressures from estate taxes and market forces. In their zeal for pretty places, they didn’t give working lands much thought. Apparently, those of us in production agriculture had managed to hide our challenges as effectively as we’d hidden our conservation.

As these discussions were taking place, the economy of Texas was changing. Through much of the 20th Century, Texas got its wealth from the ground through oil and agriculture. In the late '80s, after one of the periodic busts that marked the energy industry, state leaders decided to add another leg to the economic stool. They made it clear that Texas was open for business, especially technology. The Lone Star State entered a period of unprecedented growth.

Growth, as we came to learn from studies conducted by the American Farmland Trust between 1990 and 2000, comes with a hidden cost. Initially, leaders in rural counties were ecstatic as developments sprang up, but the jubilation was short-lived. Why? While new residents bring new tax dollars they also require increased services, which cost money…big money.

According to the American Farmland Trust’s Cost of Community Services surveys, the cost of providing those public services far exceeds the amount of tax revenue provided by residential taxpayers. On the other hand, agricultural and open space land, even with lower tax valuations generate more tax money than they require in public service costs.

This was an important realization for those who valued open spaces. We spent a lot of windshield time contemplating this and tucked it into our hip pockets for future use.

Fast forward to 2005 and Blair asked me to attend a Partnership of Rangeland Trusts meeting in Billings, Montana. I went because I respect Blair and I like Billings. I still wasn’t particularly fond of land trusts or conservation easements.

As I sat there, though, I quickly figured out these land trust cats understood agriculture from a first-hand perspective. Tellingly, at least for me, production agriculture groups in these western states, where private land butts up against public land, were forming land trusts to conserve their land, their legacy, and their way of life.

By the time the folks from the Colorado Cattlemen projected their guiding principles on the big screen, the tectonic plates of my paradigm had shifted. I looked at Blair. She looked at me. We both realized that we’d been angry about the wrong thing. The problem wasn’t the conservation easements, but our perception of how they were being used.

As we came to see, a conservation easement is a tool like any other, so the way it’s used determines whether it’s detrimental or beneficial. Thanks to those westerners, we both flew back to Texas, which by this time was losing open space agricultural land faster than any other state in the nation, thinking, “This just might work here after all.”

Soon after we got home, we got together with representatives from the Texas Farm Bureau and the Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers to talk about the possibility of forming an agricultural land trust in Texas. We agreed that forming an agricultural land trust would help give farmers, ranchers, and family foresters access to the tools necessary to combat estate taxes and keep their working lands intact in perpetuity.

While many farms, ranches, and forests may not have jaw-dropping views, they have productivity, both tangible as food, fiber, and shelter, and environmental as clean water and clean air. Productivity merits its own conservation value as does the lifestyle and livelihoods built on it.

In 2007, the Texas Agricultural Land Trust was born from our collective efforts. During its first decade, TALT became the second largest land trust in Texas and currently oversees easements on 236,000 acres of working lands across Texas with more in the works.

This land will continue to produce food, fiber, and shelter along with a myriad of other benefits such as cleaner air, better quality water, more vibrant river flows, aquifer recharge, the aesthetics of scenic open spaces, and wildlife and pollinator habitat that benefit every Texan in perpetuity. These landowning families will continue to voluntarily steward their own land, footing the bill for its care while paying their taxes and contributing to the health and growth of their local communities.

At the moment, a conservation easement is the only tool available for landowners who want to keep their working lands open forever. This legal document, which requires much thought, commitment and planning, provides a reinforced, retaining wall around a family’s land legacy.

Succeeding generations can’t convene at the courthouse to squabble over the land’s destiny and dismantle their heritage a lawsuit at a time. A conservation easement is legally unassailable.

In addition to keeping the land legacy intact, a conservation easement ensures that the best interest of the land is always an essential factor regardless of what is being discussed or what is being considered. When a conservation easement is present, the land has a seat at the table—forever. I would argue that of all the long-term benefits of this conservation tool, this is the most powerful and most lasting.

As I write this, Myrna, our children, and I have finalized a conservation easement that will keep the Laurels Ranch, our piece of Hillingdon Ranch, open and development-free forever. We have poured ourselves into this process for almost four years; it is exceptionally challenging—and taxing—to predict what will be right forever.

The Texas Agricultural Land Trust is our partner in perpetual conservation. The organization’s guiding principles align with our family’s guiding principles. Ours is a partnership, like all good partnerships, where both sides win. A conservation easement held by TALT is a voluntary solution that works for us.

I’ve unashamedly come full circle. Today, I find myself extolling the benefits of conservation easements to my extended family. As preceding generations died land ownership was spread into more hands. Hillingdon is collectively owned by more than 20 family units with some controlling a few acres and others several hundred.

Until now, the family has relied on shared memories and common experiences to keep the ranch intact. The last generation to spend summers here is silver-haired now. Succeeding generations are scattered by geography and interests. Without a series of conservation easements, there is no guarantee that the legacy that is Hillingdon Ranch will pass to the seventh generation. I hope the Laurels Ranch conservation easement will serve as template for my extended family and make the monumental task of keeping Hillingdon Ranch intact a little easier.

While our story and struggle are personal, we’re not alone. Conservation easements preserve our past, but they also assure our future. We cannot live without the land and its natural bounty—and we shouldn’t be foolish enough to try. Conservation easements, which preserve open space land and voluntary stewardship by committed landowners forever, are the key to replenishing our beloved hills, our beloved plains, and our beloved rivers, lakes and streams, day after day, year after year, generation after generation.

2020 Evaluation Report: Texas Farm and Ranch Land Conservation Program

tfrlcp_evaluation_report_2020-11-12.pdf
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Margaret Menicucci Braun & Gresham Attorneys at Law “Conservation Basics & Income and Estate Tax Benefits”
File Size:	3195 kb
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Shane Kiefer, CWB Plateau Land & Wildlife Management “Introduction to Wildlife Management Property Tax Valuation”
File Size:	4731 kb
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