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Highlands Today

Wise Conservation

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Jimmy Wohl

Published: January 27, 2009

With development rapidly encroaching upon rural parts of Florida, the need to maintain green space has resulted in unprecedented purchases of land by governmental agencies and environmental advocacy groups.
The resulting costs to taxpayers for acquisitions and management were onerous in good economic times, but, given today's financial environment, have become cost prohibitive.
During the past several years there has been increasing pressure to find creative, innovative and cost effective ways to protect and preserve Florida's natural habitats. The most popular and widely accepted method is the use of conservation easements.
The acquisition of a conservation easement provides financial compensation and/or tax credits to a landowner for the voluntary extinguishment of development rights and possibly other land use rights.
The landowner retains fee title while a conservation easement is recorded in the public records.
The landowner's payment and/or tax credit is some fractional proportion of the property's appraised value depending on the designated uses permitted by the easement.
The sale of conservation easements for agriculture property is truly a win-win-win scenario and a trend that is becoming more prevalent with environmental preservation.
First, the landowner retains ownership of the property and is allowed continued, limited use; second, the land is preserved for future generations and cannot be developed; and third, the public is not burdened with the high costs associated with purchasing and managing government-owned property.
Jimmy Wohl
Manages/co-ownsa 5,200-acre cattle ranchin Sebring

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