July 17, 2000
?Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft interred with their bones.?
Mark Antony, in William Shakespeare?s ?Julius Caesar,? begins his funeral oration with a rhetorical and probably intentional erroneous assumption: that a person?s good works are buried with their bones. Not so! If we assume that creation of a conservation easement is a good work, it lives beyond the interment of its creator.
Recalling that a conservation easement is created when a landowner transfers a development right (logging trees, building homes, commercial or industrial uses) to a qualified land trust, this ?good work? lives on in perpetuity. Perpetuity is a very long time, and no one can guarantee that a ?good work? can live forever. Nonetheless, when a conservation easement is created, the good is interred in the intentional transfer of a land development or exploitation right to a non-profit organization that can live forever to protect the creator?s intention.
However, no good deed goes unpunished. Transfer of a right to log trees, build homes, or limit commercial uses on a piece of land may have an ?evil? impact on the creator?s friends, neighbors, and families. When a valuable parcel of land passes from one generation to the next, it may carry unresolved family issues that open up when the next generation receives and manages the property.
A speaker at a recent Land Trust Alliance conference, who now specializes in the mediation of estate and wealth transfer planning, told how her experiences changed her life and her profession. She was a beneficiary of a very large estate along with her siblings and relatives. After more than twenty years of litigation she concluded that much of her decades of personal turmoil could have been prevented had the family been able to communicate and work out a plan together before the creator of the estate had died.
Creation of a conservation easement, done properly, is an opportunity to start a ?wealth transfer plan? discussion with family or, where appropriate, with neighbors and friends. The conservation plan should be discussed directly with each family member who will be affected by it. This discussion should be a part of the overall estate plan. However, family members may feel more comfortable to voice their concerns to a neutral mediator, therapist, minister, or anyone able to listen and facilitate communication between the ?stakeholders/family members.? Each individual need to feel free to express their individual concerns, needs, and plans. In addition, every ?stakeholder? needs to understand every other participant.
Another Shakespearean tragedy, ?King Lear,? is a story about sibling rivalry and the tragic consequences of miscommunication when King Lear mistakenly disinherits his youngest daughter, Cordelia. Perhaps if King Lear had called a family meeting, with a mediator who facilitated an open expression of sibling and family rivalry, financial needs and fears, and dreams of anticipated use, they could have reached a harmonious agreement. (But we would have lost one of Shakespeare?s greatest dramas.)
The same open and forthright discussion should also take place with neighbors in a watershed. Sanctuary Forest, the land trust headquartered in the Upper Mattole, has initiated a series of house meetings, where neighbors are invited to begin a dialogue on the values expressed in their decisions to live in the growing forests of post-industrial timber lands. If a landowner does decide to limit building of residences, restore forest holdings with sustainable silviculture, and place the obligation on a land trust to monitor these plans, the neighbors in the watershed should be given the opportunity to discuss their needs, fears, concerns, and impacts on their own lands. Good deeds, not understood, may not necessarily result in good consequences.
Good works start in our own families, and to be successful must have the full and extended family?s acceptance of the plan. If this is not possible, if full acceptance is not going to happen, then the creator of the plan can create a dynamic dispute and interest resolution process inside of the plan to accommodate and deal with those who do not accept it. The creator, be he King Lear, Julius Caesar, or your next- door neighbor, can keep the plan responsive to change while still ensuring that his good intentions are carried out in perpetuity.
In the next article on conservation easements, I will explore ways in which the costs of individual conservation easements can be significantly reduced. For example, neighbors could accept legal mutual and interlocking conservation easements or deed restrictions. Alternatively, neighbors could establish their own land trust or become affiliates of an existing land trust. Monitoring could be the primary responsibilities of the neighborhood, with supervision and review by an existing land trust. Local self-monitoring conservation easements may be the way to reduce costs of creation and maintenance of each landowner?s individual ?good works.?
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TOC for Forest & River News, Summer 2000