New Podcast Episode: Conserving private land

Conservation easements have a long history as an effective conservation tool for private landowners. Learn about the history of conservation easements in Canada and why landowners might choose to restrict their property rights in favour of conservation.

For more information check out these resources:

• Provincial diffusion, national acceptance: the transfer of conservation easement policy in Canada
• The implementation of market based conservation tools under ALSA: A review
• Forrest Hisey profile

Transcript

Host: You're listening to the Land Use Podcast, brought to you by the Alberta Land Institute.

Forrest: This is really just a discussion on what the future of this piece of land is going to look like and out of that discussion comes an easement.

If you're limiting your property rights in some capacity, that's a big step for a landowner, especially if it's on a working land like a ranch or a farm. So it's not an easy decision to make.

If folks are thinking, how do we get biodiversity to be supported on private landscapes, I think easements, while might be not necessarily the fit for everybody, but they can provide a conversation point.

Host: Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Land Use Podcast. My name is Aysha Wu with the Alberta Land Institute.

Today we'll be discussing conservation easements, but before we start, I would like to acknowledge that the University of Alberta, its buildings, labs, and research stations are primarily located on the territory of the Néhiyaw (Cree), Niitsitapi (Blackfoot), Métis, Nakoda (Stoney), Dene, Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and Anishinaabe (Ojibway/Saulteaux), lands that are now known as part of Treaties 6, 7, and 8, and homeland of the Métis. The University of Alberta respects the sovereignty, lands, histories, languages, knowledge systems, and cultures of all First Nations, Metis, and Inuit nations.

With so many competing demands for land uses, incentivizing conservation can be a challenge. Various frameworks and tools have been introduced to try address the problem to varying degrees of success. Conservation easements are a tool that has been utilized by landowners across the country.

Today’s guest, Forrest Hisey, is joining us to talk about his research into the development of Canadian conservation easement policy.

Thank you for joining me, Forrest. Could you introduce yourself?

Forrest: So I'm Dr. Forrest Hisey, Assistant Professor of Natural Resource Management in the Department of Ecology and Environmental Studies at Florida Gulf Coast University.

Host: Awesome, thank you. So I hear that you have a bit of a personal connection to land use in Alberta.

Forrest: I do, yeah. I grew up on a farm about 30 minutes east of Edmonton, a cow-calf operation on a quarter section, and so have always been interested in working lands, especially in Western Canada. A lot of my research is out there. A lot of my passion is still on those landscapes.

Host: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense why you would go into this kind of field.

Forrest: Right. Yeah, that and the cliche with my name, like it, yeah, it's just great.

Host: Of course, it was meant to be, right?

Forrest: Exactly.

Host: So to provide a little bit of a background, could you tell me what conservation easements are?

Forrest: Sure. Kind of at the bare bones of the foundation, they're just a voluntary agreement between a landowner and a land trust or another accredited organization. So (the) easiest way to think about this is a property owner decides that they care about their land or they want to protect it in some capacity and it's coming from them. So they go out, and maybe they know a local land trust or maybe a bigger organization, and they sit down they have a discussion about their dreams for their land. So they say, I care about this place. Maybe it's been in my family a couple of generations, and I want that protected in some capacity.

The organization then decides ecologically how much value that has. They send out some biologists, some ecologists, and then they come back and say, okay, let's start to think about what types of restrictions are acceptable for you and what kind of protections can we provide. So at the end of the day, this is really just a discussion on what the future of this piece of land is going to look like. And out of that discussion comes an easement, which is unique because each one is individually negotiated, the landowner gets to continue using it in some sustainable way. They get to continue living there. It's still their property, they can go and sell it after. But all that changes really is maybe there's some restrictions on resource extraction. Maybe they can't have more of it converted to ag, or maybe they can't, you know, develop it or subdivide it. So at the end of the day, this is just reinforcing good land stewardship between a landowner and whoever's going to come next.

Host: Okay, do you want to just briefly kind of talk about when conservation easements kind of came about and what problem they were created to address?

Forrest: Sure, yeah. So across the world really, people have always been thinking and caring about land in different ways. Easements really start to kind of come on the surface surprisingly, in the late 1800s. You have these private landowners or these communities in New England and the United States who are watching the timber industry really take off and they're seeing their forests get clear cut. And so what they start to do is just buy pieces of land for use and protection. So they're just buying land not to do anything with it. And that kind of stays that way for a little bit. They're not really easements because they're not called that, there's no legislation, but it's just landowners caring about the land.

In about the 1950s, a fellow by the name of William White creates this idea of an easement. He writes it down, kind of the first instance we see in the literature. By about the 70s in the United States, easement policy starts to take off. So states are getting involved with this, they're starting to codify it in legislation. Canada, right, we're looking south, we are a little bit late to the party. And by the 1990s, the late 80s and early 90s, the provinces start to notice that private land conservation could be a really interesting tool for landowners, for conservation organizations, and just, you know, the community at large. And so really, if we're thinking about Canada and Alberta specifically, early 90s is the starting of easements appearing on the scene. By about 2002, every jurisdiction, so all provinces and territories in Canada have some type of legislation that allows for easements, or at least the idea.

Host: So then for your research, what were you looking at specifically?

Forrest: Yeah, so originally my easement work is with my dissertation from the University of Toronto, Mississauga. And I really wanted to understand what was motivating people. So I wanted to get out on the land and talk to landowners, especially out west around native grasslands, which are some of the most endangered landscapes globally, and places that I grew up with, places that I'd spent time. So I figured that's, you know, passion and, and an academic interest. They fit well. I went to the literature and it turned out, surprisingly, that there hasn't been a lot of the foundational study of easements in Canada.

So my dissertation very quickly turned from a couple case studies that I'm very interested in to case studies, but also providing some foundations, so looking at policy and legislation. The first chapter looks at the national legislation, seeing how policy migrated from province to province, what roles that the federal government, NGOs, lobbyists had in this case. And then thankfully, I get to move into case studies. I get to talk to some amazing people. But I provide the basis for, okay, this is why we're doing the things, this is legislatively how we can kind of enable them, and then I move into why do people care about this? Or what policies or incentives are driving the placement of easements? Because it, really, if you're limiting your property rights in some capacity, that's a big step for a landowner, especially if it's on a working land like a ranch or a farm. And so it's not an easy decision to make.

Host: Who did you talk to for your case studies?

Forrest: Yeah, so there's a couple of ranches in southern Alberta. The Waldron Ranch is pretty notorious for having one of the largest easements in Western Canada. They have, I think now almost 120 thousand acres in easement. So they own it still. It's a grazing cooperative made-up of at least 60 ranchers. I think that number shifted a little bit in recent years. But they've partnered with the Nature Conservancy of Canada. And so they have a really unique story, a really unique kind of model for community ranching and also conservation because this is all native grass for the most part that's protected perpetually because of the easement.

There's other stakeholders and case studies that I talked to that are smaller. My ethics doesn't allow me to get too into the weeds with who they are and where they are, but I ranged from massive cooperatives with 60 plus ranchers all the way down to single families who were very much interested in just protecting what their grandparents had bought and they wanted their grandkids to see. And that's the beauty of easements is they're so flexible that you can take it from a very business kind of centric model with a ton of different folks that are invested in growing their business, but at the same time it can just also be a very personal thing.

Host: Okay. Do you want to talk about some of your key findings?

Forrest: Sure. I led in with the flexibility just now, and I think that's a major key finding. I mentioned earlier that easements are unique. So everybody who puts an easement has to negotiate it on their own or, you know, with a lawyer and financial experts and such, and also land trust experts or the organization that they're working with provides expertise. But it's hard to say this is an easement that will just be repeated over and over. So when people hear the word conservation easement, they get kind of nervous because everybody's is different. And that's actually a strength. This is this idea of diversity is nobody's piece of land is the exact same. And what an easement does is understand that and try to support that.

And so what I've found is, usually nowadays, easements, especially in Alberta around working lands, focus on no till. So no more agricultural conversion, no development and no subdivision. They're not too particular about how many trees you can cut down or how much rotational grazing you're doing, for example, by and large, they really are working to keep intact lands healthy and intact because they want folks to be able to be supported with the land use that they're already doing, right? If you're putting an easement on, it's to almost reward you in this case that you've done such a good job that this piece of land is ecologically valuable.

That's another key finding that really segues nicely into these are private pieces that can really build a mosaic of conservation. So if we think about all of the animals, all of the species that are moving from you know protected areas, parks, other biodiverse areas that are under some type of protection, what happens is there's a patchwork or a checkerboard of public and private land usually. And so what an easement can really do effectively is start to fill in that checkerboard. And so it's still private, it's still being used, there's still some type of livelihood there, some type of family there or a landowner, but at the end of the day, it's still providing ecological benefits in addition to the economics. They do a really good job of balancing the two.

Host: So you were talking about, you know, private land conservation. So I'm curious to know then, is land conservation mainly spearheaded just by private individuals or groups? Or I guess to what degree is the government involved?

Forrest: So it can be both. From the federal government's perspective, they have this program called the Federal Eco Gift. And what that does is it provides a federal tax incentive, essentially a tax break, but it also provides some recognition. So you get an eco gift on your land if you put an easement, for example, and the government will come out and say, you get a tax break. We've established that this place is ecologically significant for Canada and largely North America or the world in this case. And so there's a little bit of recognition, there's kind of a feel good, right? It's less so about an individual right, more so a public responsibility or an obligation of having a land ethic in this case.

From the provincial government's perspective, they usually have some type of funding mechanism, or they'll work with environmental NGOs such as Ducks Unlimited, NCC, other smaller regional groups as well. And there's the Alberta Land Trust grant program, which has gone under some reconstruction in the most recent government, but still provides opportunities for land trusts to basically VIE for funding. So they'll put a proposal forward, they'll say this project is great because there's X amount of native grass or there's species at risk here that we need to really protect. And so it's a way of providing public dollars to support private individuals at the same time.

Host: So in your opinion, what more do you think the government could be doing to support conservation easements?

Forrest: I mean, always, they could provide more money. I think that's a, it's a bit of a cop out. I have a lot of like policy minded solutions that are pretty boring. So I don't know if your listeners are super excited about that.

Host: You know, honestly, I think that I would and a lot of our listeners would be very interested to hear about the policy part of it.

Forrest: Okay. Well, at the risk of scaring folks away, there's an interesting value metric where an easement is ecological. in the sense that we're caring about the native grass, the species, whatever it is on the land, we want that protected and taken care of, but it's valued through a real estate lens. So for example, if you have two potential easements, one, let's say outside of Calgary, it's beautiful outside the Rockies, you know, you have that eastern slope view, that property value is going to be pretty high comparatively to somewhere near Wainwright, for example, or something like that. There might actually be more ecological value in the Wainwright property, for example, but the real estate value is different between the two.

And so how easements work is when they're paid out to the landowner, it's usually a one-time payment of about 20 to 30% of their property value. And so you can start to see how there might be a discrepancy in some cases. Now, I'm not saying this is a blanket issue, but I've talked to some groups and I've seen in my research where there could be a an opportunity to really get the true value for the landowner in this case, and provide kind of a better understanding of the economic and ecologic values that are going into an easement valuation metric right now.

Host: That's a great point. I never even would have considered that. That's really interesting.

Forrest: Yeah, and Alberta is such a fascinating and diverse landscape, just like physiographically. So you have the boreal forests, you have the eastern slopes, you have grasslands, badlands, aspen parkland, and so easements are great because they can work in so many different places. All they need is enabling legislation, a willing landowner, and some type of private property. And so it's a really cool province to look at private land ownership and private conservation but at the same time, you start to see these discrepancies and these issues start to manifest a bit.

Host: Yeah, for sure. Was there anything that surprised you about any of your findings?

Forrest: Yeah, so right off the bat, when I did that really foundational piece of kind of policy tracing and analysis, maybe naively, I assumed that there was going to be pushback politically. I assumed that there was going to be certain parties, certain governments that weren't interested, right? It's easy to think nowadays when we have more disagreement than agreement in politics. And I just kept finding that this was one of the least political issues ever.

In Canada, especially, they swept across the country in roughly a decade. In that time, they went from progressive conservative governments to NDP governments to liberal governments, everybody was on board. Once the government in power, the folks even in the official opposition understood what these things were, they realized that these are just another tool. So they support private property and private ownership. They support biodiversity gains. They support sustainable ranching, which is a big part of especially Western Canada's kind of cultural image, at least in Alberta and places. And so trying to pick apart why they shouldn't support legislation for easements, it just really fell flat, something I didn't expect.

And then when I got out to some of my case studies and talked to folks, it was really interesting because I had also assumed that the money that that 20 to 30 per cent payment was going to be an important piece of it. And it is to a degree. But what I kept hearing was, oh, I want my grandkids to have this place. I want them to connect as I've connected with this place. Yeah, I still need to run my cattle, but I love the fact that sharp-tailed grouse are, you know, in my backyard and there's a family of elk that come through and use the river valley. And so there's an extrinsic, which is the financial, still important, but the vast majority of folks, when it became their motivation, their reason to basically limit their ability to profit off their land, It was almost always intrinsic values, these kind of emotional, ethical, even philosophical reasoning. And that, again, I didn't expect that at all.

Host: Yeah, I agree. I would also not expect that, but they're both such incredibly positive findings.

Forrest: Right, yeah, it was a feel-good moment for myself when I was doing this work.

Host: So how can other researchers build off of your work?

Forrest: Yeah, as I've said a couple times, the foundational aspects of my work are really just springboards at this point. I think the gap in the literature is pretty substantial, especially when we consider how large Canada is, how much private property we have. A lot of our species at risk are found on private land. And so researchers in biodiversity corners of the world, or at least in the, you know, the universities or the think tanks, what they can do is look at these as an opportunity to provide more programming. So if existing programs for habitat conservation aren't working, maybe an easement could be there.

There's also a thing called a term conservation easement. And I should clarify that everything I've kind of said so far is around perpetual conservation easements. And so these are easements that are on property title regardless of landowner change or succession. In this case, a term easement would be a 25 year term of an easement, and then it could lead into a perpetual one if the landowner wants. They're very, very much in the pilot stage. There's one program that I've done work with in southwestern Saskatchewan, and they show great promise in certain areas with certain communities.

And so out of this, if folks are thinking, how do we get people to kind of care more? How do we get biodiversity to be supported on private landscapes, I think easements, while might be not necessarily the fit for everybody, but they can provide a conversation point moving forward.

Host: Absolutely. It provides an option for people, because it really does sound like there is already that care there, that people do want to contribute to conservation.

Forrest: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I think at the end of the day, a lot of people care deeply about their land, and this provides an opportunity to show that. One of the folks that I interviewed and who's now become a good friend of mine, said, when you have easements kind of sprinkled through a landscape, you have a community of conservationists. You have that ethic built on the land. Because if they're perpetual, and most easements are at this point, the next generation of landowner has to abide by those. And they get told that when they are interested in the land. The real estate agent should say this has a conservation easement, meaning maybe you can't develop it all or you can't subdivide it. And if they're okay with that and just kind of extends this idea of stewardship beyond the grave, so to speak, not to get too morbid, but beyond the previous owner. And I think that's a really beautiful statement, especially when we're caring about open space, we're caring about our working lands and agricultural families in this day and age.

And so these are really a supportive tool. Perpetuity is scary. I fully understand that as a farm kid, I totally get that, but there's a lot more nuance to these. And just having this conversation is so great because maybe an easement doesn't work for you. Maybe it's something else, a habitat agreement, a different program, for example, but it just showcases that you're still caring because this is your place, this is your home, and hopefully for future generations as well.

Host: Yeah, for sure. Surprisingly, we're already kind of coming to the end of our time here, but before we wrap up, is there anything that you wanted to talk about that we didn't get to, or do you have any concluding thoughts?

Forrest: That's a good question. I think, I mean, I can talk about this for days on end. I just, I'd like to probably reiterate that Alberta has one of the most unique easement frameworks from their funding models with the provincial government, the Alberta Land Trust Grant program. And it is currently being restructured and there's discussions internally with the provincial government. It's the only place in Canada that I found where the provincial government said we're going to provide money and we're going to, we care about this. We care about giving private landowners the ability to make their mark on the land in a positive way.

Before easements, if you wanted to do this work, you would either have to donate the land to make a park or something, or you would have to just sit on it and hope that the next generation of landowner was going to take on your wishes. And so I think Alberta has a really fascinating opportunity to really readjust their easement, the potential for easements, so it can be an even bigger tent. So more people, more opportunity for landowners to really make their mark. And then also for the next generation, because I remember what I was doing on the farm when I was growing up, and I don't have kids yet, but if I do, and I have a large piece of land, I want them to be able to spend that time and enjoy what I enjoyed as well.

Host: That's a great way to conclude the episode. But quickly, where can people go to learn more about this?

Forrest: Thank you. Yeah. So what they can do, they can just Google my name. I'm getting my feet wet down here in Florida, literally and figuratively. And so I'm hoping to extend my private land conservation and easement research in a comparative sense between Canada and the United States. And so they can reach out via e-mail. I don't have a website yet, unfortunately. I've also got a litany of papers that are in review or being published as we speak on easements specifically in Canada as well.

Host: Yeah, perfect. And I will also make sure to link your research in the description as well so people can check it out there. But thank you so much for joining me, Forrest.

Forrest: Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate the time and the labour for doing this. Thank you.

Host: If you'd like to know more about Forrest’s research, it is linked in the description below. As always, if you enjoyed the episode, give us a like, a comment, and a follow to stay up to date with all of our latest podcast episodes. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, X, and LinkedIn, and sign up for our newsletter on uab.ca/ali. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Land Use Podcast.