A Legacy That Lasts
Although I’ve been retired from the ministry for almost eight years now, I continue to engage in ministerial activities when circumstances warrant. This includes “pastoral visits” to former parishioners with whom I had developed a special rapport over my three-decade tenure.
A few weeks ago, one of these individuals landed in the hospital so I sent an email asking if he was open to my stopping by. He accepted the offer gratefully, and we spent a delightful hour bantering on a variety of subjects, including the environment. In the course of that digression, I learned that he was one of the founders of the Natural Heritage Land Trust, which is now known as Groundswell.
This is an organization I think highly of because it works to preserve farmland and ecologically significant pockets of private land. My wife and I have contributed to Groundswell for several decades, and when the First Unitarian Society wanted to honor my twentieth anniversary with a sizable donation to a non-profit of my choice, I pointed them to this well-regarded institution.
Organizations committed to this cause exist throughout the country. Here in Dane County, the Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance (formerly Madison Audubon) has also broadened its mission and become a certified land trust. The Natural Land Institute, based in Rockford, does comparable work on the other side of the state line. For the past two years I’ve been working with the latter to protect a forty-two-acre chunk of property on the Rock River that we inherited when my mother passed away.
The business of preserving a parcel of rural land is complicated. Outright purchases by the land trust are expensive and therefore relatively rare. Conservation easements often make more sense because ownership doesn’t change hands, but the same objective is achieved. A binding contract between the landholder and the Trust is drawn up, stipulating that the property will be used for agricultural production and/or wildlife habitat in perpetuity. The easement accompanies any future sale of the land, prohibiting development or other alternative uses, regardless of who takes possession.
Naturally, such arrangements decrease the market value of the asset, in our case by approximately one-hundred-thousand dollars. Since the federal government’s Department of Agriculture has a stake in farmland preservation, they will compensate the owner for a portion of that loss, and the balance can be written off one’s taxes over several years. But forgoing the possibility of future development – particularly of a piece of riverfront adjacent to a community college such as we own – does entail a financial sacrifice. So why do it?
In our case, the farm family who has rented and cultivated twenty-five acres of our holding for the past half-century are good stewards who practice minimal tillage. The remainder is undisturbed woodland, with a spring-fed creek that empties into the Rock River. It is one of the few undeveloped tracts of riverfront in the ten-mile stretch between Dixon and Sterling. For the directors of the Natural Land Trust, it represents a prime target for preservation.
We’ve supported environmental organizations throughout our lives, joining the Sierra Club in the late 1970’s, and making annual contributions to The Wilderness Society, The Center for Biological Diversity, Audubon, National Wildlife Federation, and others. I trust that the money helps, but in terms of the ecological challenges the upper Midwest faces I can’t imagine a gift more efficacious – and gratifying – than this. We – and our son to whom we will pass along the property and the easement – are fortunate to be in a position to create such a legacy.
