“Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?
They paved paradise, put up a parking lot.”
Joni Mitchell’s famous lines from Big Yellow Taxi are more important today than they were in 1969.
Fortunately, I live in a community where public land abounds. Nevertheless, private holdings remain under threat for future development. If all private land was developed adjacent to these public lands, huge homes and multi-family tourist developments would be visible everywhere equivalent to paving paradise.
I am proud to be on the Board of Directors of the Estes Valley Land Trust (EVLT). Our mission is to conserve land throughout the Estes Valley and surrounding areas for current and future generations. Conservation is defined as the prevention of wasteful use of a resource. Conservation is planned management to prevent exploitation, destruction, or neglect of a natural area.
When I think about conserving land, I dream of beautiful landscapes as well as abundant habitat for wildlife. I believe EVLT speaks for the one-legged trees as well as for the furred, finned, and feathered wildlife in our community.
Our local Land Trust is one of 948 such organizations across the United States. A land trust is an organization that works to protect both public and private lands through conservation easements. A landowner can voluntarily enter into a legal agreement with the Estes Valley Land Trust that permanently restricts land use to protect the nature-based values of a property.
A conservation easement assures conservation into the future. If a property is sold, the easement remains with it. The property owner can be eligible for certain state and federal income tax benefits. Aside from the tangible benefits, an easement demonstrates the environmental consciousness of landowners who want to maintain the natural beauty and plentiful wildlife in an area such as ours.
In the daunting era of rapid climate change, the conservation of land is a positive action to take. Whether it is one acre or a thousand acres, the EVLT attempts to keep our community as natural as possible. I am grateful that the adjacent area south of downtown is in a permanent easement that enables wildlife to freely roam the area. Just this week, EVLT trust approved two property easements adjacent to Rocky Mountain National Park and US Forest Service Land that will be kept in their most natural state into perpetuity.
I am thankful that people in my community appreciate what we’ve got!