From the Executive Director:
Caretakers of the Land
Summer 2010
Growing up, my grandparents had a summer home on Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. One of my favorite pastimes was to explore Black’s Point with my cousins. Just east of the point, a beautiful lagoon fed by the lake was hidden away in an oak forest; we could watch bullfrogs sun on the rocks and fish swim in the quiet water.
When I returned to Black’s Point with my cousin 30 years later, I was dismayed to find that the forest had been cut and a dozen large homes now rimmed the lagoon. Any traces of wildness or wildlife had disappeared. “What a shame,” my cousin said. “That was such a special place for the lake community; it should have been protected somehow.”
My job at the Barrington Area Conservation Trust is to help ensure that our children and grandchildren don’t return to Barrington 30 years from now and also find that the special landscapes they remember have been inappropriately developed.
Barrington, my home community for more than 20 years, is unusually blessed with exceptionally scenic land that boasts some of the greatest biodiversity in the state. It appears as a “star” on most conservationists’ maps. Because of this, government and conservation groups have already protected some large parcels. But this protected land is not enough to stop the march of inappropriate development in our community that will downgrade even those protected areas.
In 2010 and beyond, it is private landowners — especially those with 5 to 500 acres — who must take the lead as caretakers of the Barrington countryside. These privately owned parcels contain the majority of remaining open space in Barrington that is vulnerable to development. We cannot depend on the whims of future municipal boards to honor our current zoning.
The best and most popular tool to protect private land is a conservation easement. For the last decade, I have worked in Door County, Wisconsin, to protect land through conservation easements. One early easement involved a 40-acre farm owned by a physician and his wife. When the owners sold it a few years later, it sold twice as fast as similar properties because the buyer recognized the high conservation value of the land and that it was protected. Today, in part because the physician took the lead, there are more than 60 conservation easements in Door County.
“Conservation easements!” some of you will say. “From what we’ve heard, they cause financial hardship and are hard to understand.” But in fact, conservation easements have not caused any financial hardship for the large majority of landowners with easements across the country (see story on back page). In these difficult economic times, conservation easements actually provide significant income, estate and property tax savings, as well as allow landowners to leave a legacy of land for their children and grandchildren.
The concept of donating development rights to a not-for-profit group like the conservation trust has been used in New England for more than a century to protect the charm of the region’s villages and countryside. We are at a pivotal juncture in Barrington, where we can become choked with traffic and sprawl, like many surrounding suburbs, or private landowners can take the lead in preserving our open countryside through the use of conservation easements. We hope you will join the Barrington Area Conservation Trust as we partner with private landowners to protect our remaining special landscapes.
Karen Yancey
Executive Director, Barrington Area Conservation Trust