Land Conservation

 

Maryland’s Eastern Shore is comprised of productive farmland, natural resource based economies, and rural communities in close proximity to major metropolitan areas. The Shore’s beautiful coastal landscape is also vulnerable, susceptible to both sprawl development and climate change, which leads to habitat and farmland loss, coastal flooding, and saltwater intrusion. These threats need to be met on two fronts: advocacy for policies that benefit conservation, and the active protection, stewardship, and restoration of natural resources. Our land conservation team works to protect, steward, and restore the Eastern Shore’s land through conservation easements, enhanced stewardship, political advocacy, and land transfers and acquisitions.

 

Since 1990, ESLC has continued to:

 

  • Permanently protect more than 65,000 acres of farms and forest.
  • Provide public access to open space, including: parks, farmland, hiking trails, urban gardens, and the Chesapeake Bay.
  • Pioneer innovative land protection programs in an effort to help farms stay viable and assist younger generations of farmers in becoming landowners.
  • Help landowners discover, evaluate, and implement the land protection and enhancement options available to them.

land conservation team

Land Conservation FAQ

  • What is a land trust or land conservancy?

    Land trusts and land conservancies are community-oriented nonprofit organizations that work with many partners and individual community members in order to conserve wildlife habitat, protect water quality, and keep land open and accessible for future generations. Sometimes this involves acquiring land outright, sometimes we transfer that land to other stakeholders, and sometimes we secure conservation easements for private or public land owners. Once the land has been protected, land trusts work to monitor easements and enhance a property’s conservation values. Land protected by conservancies provides limitless community and environmental benefits from productive agricultural economies to clean air, climate change resiliency, and opportunities for people to connect with nature. Land trusts can be local, state, or regional and can be privately run or government-based. ESLC was the very first land trust established on Delmarva.

  • What is a conservation easement?

    A conservation easement is a voluntary legal agreement between a landowner and a government group or conservation organization that restricts development on the property. The easement outlines the conservation values of the land and helps to protect the property’s natural resources, scenic views, agricultural production, wildlife habitat, tributary buffers, and more—all while the landowner maintains private ownership.

  • Where does ESLC conserve land?

    Eastern Shore Land Conservancy protects over 326 conservation easements in the upper six counties of Maryland’s Eastern Shore (Cecil, Kent, Queen Anne’s, Caroline, Talbot, and Dorchester).

  • How does ESLC conserve land?

    ESLC conserves land through conservation easements, through land acquisitions and transfers, through local and regional advocacy, and through managing our three preserves.

  • How long does it take to complete a conservation easement?

    The average length for completing a conservation easement will vary based on the complexity of the project, the easement program used, and the partners involved. As such, it is difficult to provide exact timing for the completion of a conservation easement project. The estimates here are based on projects with few to no challenges for project completion.

    • For donated easements, there is no wait time. Once ESLC is engaged, an easement donation can be completed in 3-4 months*. If you are interested in receiving State tax benefits in addition to Federal benefits, thus requiring the Maryland Environmental Trust to co-hold the easement, the timeframe is extended to 6-8 months to account for their additional approval timeframes.
    • For purchased conservation easements, there are significant waiting lists for program funding. This means that it could be years before the easement transaction can begin as ESLC works with funders to gather funding for the project. Once started, an easement purchase can generally be completed in 12-18 months. 

    *ESLC may be able to process solely-held (non-MET) easement donations on faster timelines, however there is no guarantee. ESLC staff will make all good faith effort to complete a project on a landowner’s timeline. Please be aware that this may incur additional administrative fee costs for expediting the process.

  • How are conservation easements valued?

    The average value of a conservation easement varies depending upon the property’s location, land use composition, “developability”, and the program utilized for the easement. There are two methods used for determining value, which are set by the program used to acquire the conservation easement.

    1. Appraisal – This is the standard easement valuation approach for the majority of programs, and the only acceptable process for IRS qualification of easement donations. The appraisal that is completed utilizes a before-and-after approach, which looks at the highest and best use of the property without the easement (before) and with the easement in place (after). The difference between these numbers is the value of the conservation easement, for which the landowner may be eligible for a charitable contribution and/or a cash payment. In general, the more restrictive an easement is (especially as relates to the reduction in developability of the property) the higher the rate of benefit to the landowners. In general, ESLC staff estimate easement value through appraisals to be around 60% of fair market value of the property*. 
    2. Easement Valuation System (EVS) – Several easement programs, including the Rural Legacy Program and Program Open Space, provide value based on an approved equation for determining value, known as an “Easement Valuation System.” Through this, value is given to the protection of key conservation values of a property, based on the priorities of the funding partner involved. Values generally range between 40-80% of average fair market value for the county that the land lies in.

    *ESLC staff are not certified appraisers and as such cannot provide valuation advice on specific properties. The estimates given herein are based on staff experience on this issue, but can in no way guarantee any financial level of return from an easement donation or sale. 

Conservation Easement Stewardship

Placing a conservation easement on your land is only the first step in what will be a long-term relationship with ESLC. Our stewardship staff looks forward to working with each and every easement landowner to ensure that their easement is upheld in perpetuity. We also deal with all other aspects of conservation easement management, including: annual monitoring visits; landowner relations; record keeping; processing land-owner notices; requests for approval and amendments; managing of stewardship funds; enforcement; and defense. ESLC monitors every easement annually to guarantee the easement terms are met and to provide an opportunity for regular communication between landowners and ESLC staff.

Enhanced Land Stewardship

ESLC's stewardship of the Eastern Shore includes activities to restore and enhance the conservation values of land. By connecting landowners with the tools, knowledge, and funding to initiate conservation and restoration practices, we work together to uplift our rural landscape. We work closely with regional professionals such as conservation agencies, other non-profits, ecological restoration companies, and academic institutions to holistically approach conservation practices that provide co-benefits such as improvements in water quality, uplift in ecosystem biodiversity, coastal resilience, and protected habitat for threatened and endangered species. By creating wetlands, pollinator and grassland meadows, and living shorelines, we take stewardship one step further by ensuring that land is not only safe, but thriving.

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