Land preservation tax incentives should be made permanent

In every black cloud there is a silver lining, it has been said, and we suppose that this is true of the recently concluded stalemate in Congress over the “fiscal cliff” budget negotiations. When legislators in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate brokered a compromise that dealt, for a time, with the nation’s deficit, their package included a renewal of a tax incentive program for land conservation. We are confident that this news will be appreciated by those in Chester County who know first-hand how important open space preservation is, and how effective such tax plans can be at helping landowners make the decision to keep their property from development.

The incentive, which had expired at the end of 2011, was a boon to private conservation efforts while it was in effect between 2006 and 2011, said Molly Morrison, president of the Natural Lands Trust, the Delaware County-based land conservation organization.

“Nationwide, the incentive is credited with a 30 percent increase in the number of acres preserved each year,” Morrison said Monday. “At a time when public investments in open space have been reduced drastically, the incentive is a cost-effective way to encourage landowners — regardless of their means — to consider conservation as an option.”

“Private conservation donations are in our DNA in this region,” Morrison said. “Some of our most treasured open spaces exist today because of the generosity of the landowner. This incentive makes the tax benefits of such donations available to a wider array of landowners.”

“This is a good step,” said Andrew Johnson, head of the North American Land Trust in Chadds Ford, who added that the renewal was already having an impact on preservation efforts as his organization began getting more interest in conservation agreements since the turning of the calendar.

“When Congress gets involved with an idea like conservation, it reinforces that it is a tool worth using, and not some gimmick,” Johnson said. “If we’d had this in place in 2012, we could have probably conserved twice as much land as we did. We think that we will see (the organization’s efforts) in 2013 as benefiting from this.”

Conservation-minded landowners now have until Dec. 31, 2013 to take advantage of the tax deduction for donating a voluntary conservation agreement to permanently protect important natural or historic resources on their land. There are also attempts to make the tax deduction permanent, led by U.S. Rep. James Gerlach, R-6th, of West Pikeland.

“This critical conservation tool has been extremely effective because it benefits landowners who want to protect their property as well as communities interested in working together to preserve exceptional natural resources,” Gerlach said. “Renewing the incentive is a great first step, but it will not be the last.”

We hope that the dysfunction that grips our elected officials in Washington, D.C., will not stop progress on Gerlach’s call for making these exemptions permanent.