Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Good Idea: Set Priorities for Land Conservation

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by

James A. Bacon
in , ,

Virginia Conservation Land Statistics. Table credit: Department of Conservation and Recreation

Through tax credits for easements, land acquisitions for parks, and other means, the Commonwealth spends millions of dollars every year to conserve land. Under a new policy adopted by the Northam administration, the state will focus resources on safeguarding land with the highest conservation value.

This new strategy will rely upon a “data-driven process” devised by the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) to rank conservation value. The “scientific analysis” will show where the Commonwealth can get the most conservation value for the buck.

“I believe that we need a land conservation strategy that is focused and targeted toward making measurable progress on our natural resource goals, from restoration of the Chesapeake Bay to providing resilience against sea level rise and other impacts of climate change,” said Governor Ralph Northam in a press release.

The administration said it first will prioritize permanent protection of the top 2% of lands with the highest conservation value and aim for protecting the top 10% within the next ten years. Priorities will include: “protecting watersheds and local water quality, securing and recovering wildlife populations and habitats, making sure agriculture and forestry are viable and sustainable, steering development away from vulnerable and disaster-prone areas, providing access to the outdoors, and preserving sites that represent the history of all Virginians.”

The DCR website “Virginia Conservation Lands Database” page notes that of Virginia’s 25.27 million-acre land area, more than 4 million acres, or 16%, has some form of protection. The main vehicle for preserving lands at present is the land preservation tax credit for up to 40% of the value of donated land or conservation easements. Taxpayers were able to use up to $20,000 per year in 2015, 2016, and 2017, and $50,000 per year in subsequent years.

Bacon’s bottom line: This makes total sense. Indeed, I recall having advocated a priority-setting process at some point in the past. If the state is going to hand out tax credits, which are the functional equivalent of budget expenditures, it should optimize the public value of the easements. It’s astonishing to me that it has taken so long to develop a methodology for ranking the easements, but I’m glad it has finally happened. Kudos to the Northam administration for bringing the program to fruition.

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3 responses to “Good Idea: Set Priorities for Land Conservation”

  1. James A. Bacon Avatar
    James A. Bacon

    Jason McGarvey with the Virginia Outdoor Foundation provides this following background to the conservation database:

    Re: “it has taken so long to develop a methodology for ranking the easements”

    The data that DCR will be using has been around for more than a decade, for the most part. It was formerly called the Virginia Natural Landscape Assessment. http://www.dcr.virginia.gov/natural-heritage/vaconvisvnla

    Now it’s called Conservation Vision: http://www.dcr.virginia.gov/natural-heritage/vaconvision (Not sure why they didn’t just go with ConserVision!)

    Anyway, VOF has been using these models to assess the conservation values of easements for more than a decade. We also utilize additional GIS data sets and a lot of ground-truthing and individual evaluation (the latter methods being more crucial than models). I’m quite confident that the vast majority of easements we’ve done are on properties with “high conservation values.” If you overlay our easement layers with the model layers, there is a ton of overlap.

    That said, VOF has been pushing hard over the last decade for conservation to be more about quality than quantity. The McAuliffe administration embraced that approach, and the Northam administration is extending it, so we’re definitely going in a positive direction. But to think that we were just taking “whatever, wherever” before then would be an incorrect assumption.

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      I had thought that some progress had been made on the process of determining significance but I’m not sure where we are on the tax credits side which was a motivator for some properties that depending on your point of view was a win-win in that land was “saved” and the owner got the credits or .. something that more benefited the property owner if the property itself was not actually set aside for public use and it functioned more as a buffer that primarily benefited those who own adjacent land and that land’s value was enhanced.

      But here’s an old article that illustrated some of the potential problems with combining land conservation with tax credits and if not mistaken, the credits themselves were subsequently also being marketed as tax deductions for others who had no involvement in the land itself.

      Fredericksburg
      Virginia Scrutinizes Tax-Credit Land Gifts

      http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30966-2004Jul31.html

  2. Andrew Roesell Avatar
    Andrew Roesell

    Dear Jim,

    It’s a shame when whole counties like Prince William, Fairfax, and eastern Loudoun are treated as “economic sacrificial areas” to be despoiled at will by developers. The only state owned parkland in Fairfax that I am aware of is on Mason Neck which juts into the Potomac. The state has complicitly allowed Fairfax to be paved over with nary a whimper. Eastern Loudoun, particularly in the Broadlands/Ashburn and South Riding areas is mincemeat in exchange for keeping hands off of western Loudoun. We have open space “haves” & “have nots.” Middle and lower classes must not have souls, but are fit only for ugliness, traffic, air pollution and a lack of contact with nature. Richmond and “ROV” take the money from this area and leave the locals to the tender mercies of the developers. Thanks!

    Sincerely,

    Andrew

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