0299-GCG-FoothillsConservancy ESG24-FINALb (1) - Flipbook - Page 17
2024 Impact Report
A Nod to
Conservation
Easement
Landowners
The Relationship Between People and
the Places they Call Home
By Katelyn Nelsen
Land and Stewardship Manager
Conservation easement landowners are the foremost
caretakers of their land. They are the people who, in
many cases, have been protecting the conservation
Katelyn Nelsen
values of their land well before any easement has,
and it shows. Oftentimes, a conservation easement
is just an extension of the landowner’s environmental
ethic and a re昀氀ection of the values and care that they
and their predecessors have exhibited for the land,
sometimes for generations.
I have followed landowners on the ground as they
trace the exact boundary lines of their conservation
easement property, curves, angles, and all, with nothing
more than their familiarity with the land – something
I struggle to do sometimes, even with boundary signs
and a digital, georeferenced map on an iPad. I have
heard stories of landowners vigorously protecting their
land from encroachments, cutting up and removing
tree tops and brush that were deposited into creeks
that run through their property by an adjacent
landowner, addressing unauthorized ATV trespassers,
developing holistic and sustainable hunting or forestry
practices, installing signage along miles of boundary
line, and building relationships with neighbors to
enhance the stewardship of their own land.
For so many landowners, their conservation easement
property is more than a forest or farm. It’s the land
they’ve grown up on and learned from. It’s the land
that has provided for their family. And, it’s land they
want others to care about and 昀椀nd value in. For other
landowners, it’s land they’ve come to know and
love later in life; land that drives their curiosity and
wonder, and land they want to see protected for the
generations to come.
Whatever inspires an owner of conservation easement
land under the auspices of Foothills Conservancy
of North Carolina, the connection they have to their
land is a beautiful thing to behold, and their love and
passion for the land is truly contagious. It reminds me
that land stewardship is about so much more than
simply visiting once a year and documenting changes
to the property; it’s about the relationship between
people and the places they call home.
Conservation Easement - A voluntary, legally binding agreement between a landowner and a land trust or government agency that
permanently limits uses of the land in order to protect its conservation values. A conservation easement allows the landowner to retain many
private property rights and is one option they have to protect the property for future generations.
Conservation Values - A valuation system based on the type and amount of natural resources, biodiversity, open space, historic, and/or
recreational resources present in an area. Examples include: plants and animals; the air, water, and soil in or on which a plant or animal lives or
may live; landscape and landform; geological features; and systems of interacting living organisms and their environment.
Stewardship - The careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one’s care; in our case, the land.
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