Enhancing Conservation Options: An Argument for Statutory Recognition of Options to Purchase Conservation Easements (OPCEs)

• Date: 01 August 2017

8-2017 NEWS & ANALYSIS 47 ELR 10655

A R T I C L E

Enhancing Conservation Options:

An Argument for Statutory

Recognition of Options to Purchase

Conservation Easements (OPCEs)

by Federico Cheever and Jessica Owley

Federico Cheever was a Professor of Law and the Co-Director of the Environmental and Natural Resources Program at

the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. Jessica Owley is a Professor of Law at SUNY Bualo Law School.

I. Introduction

Land conser vation t ransactions have been t he most

active component of the conser vation movement in

the United State s for the past thre e decades.1 Pract itio-

ners u se trad itional rea l estate tools to preser ve habitat,

scener y, and h istorically signicant places. Sometimes

these tools are used by government entities, but they

often i nvolve nonprot land conservation orga nizations

known as land tru sts, which buy and accept donations

of la nd and conservation easements encu mbering la nd.

According to the Land Trust Allianc e 2010 National

Census, more th an 1,700 la nd trus ts (local, state, and

nationa l) are active in the United States.2 ese orga-

nizat ions are staed and supported by a lmost 5 million

people.3 A con servation e asement, the primar y pr ivate

land c onservat ion tool, is a non-posse ssory prop erty

right restricting a landowner’s use of a pa rcel of land to

yield a conservation benet.4 e National Conserva-

tion Easement Datab ase estimates that approximately

1. See W H. R, E L viii–ix (2d ed. 1994);

R W. G  ., C. R S., R42346, F L

O: O  D 15–16 (2012); Don Gourlie, e Wil-

derness Act at 50, 44 E. L. 285, 285 (2014).

2. K C, L T A, 2010 N L T C-

 R 5 (2011), http://perma.cc/A6DS-RURA.

3. Id. at 8.

4. E B  K M P, T C E-

 H 14-22 (2d ed. 2005).

40,000,000 acres of land have been protec ted by conser-

vation easement in the United States.5

e prospect of climate cha nge diminishes the value of

most real estate tools currently used by proponents of land

conservation transactions.6 A conservation easement binds

only the parcel of land described. What scientists know of

climate change suggests a natural world in motion; there is

no guarantee that the things people value on specic par-

cels will continue to be there in future decades. is Article

outlines one potential response to the challenge of private

land conservation under climate change: a reinvigorated

use of real estate options to purchase conservation ease-

ments (OPCEs).

In the world climate change is creating, with its sub-

stantial uncertainties and shifting windows of opportu-

nity, OPCEs can ser ve strategic purposes. For example,

if a potential conservation easement holder knows that a

particularly valuable species habitat will migrate over time,

but does not k now exactly where or when it will migrate,

the prospective conservation easement holder could choose

to purchase options to preser ve habitat along a number of

potential migration pathways intending, eventually, only

to purchase conservation easements along one pathway as

the actua l migration pattern emerges. Similarly, potential

conservation easement holders—committed to preserv-

ing coastal habitats and aware that sea level will rise, but

unable to determine how far sea level will rise and how

sea level rise and storm surge wil l aect coasta l congu-

ration and usage—might purchase options across a broad

zone of potential future shoreline habitat with the intent to

5. N C E D, Completeness, http://per-

ma.cc/8UBB-2NJT.

6. See Jessica Owley, , in

E L  C I  N: A C-

 A 64 (Keith Hirokawa ed., 2014) (discussing the inherent

mismatch between static property tools and the changing world).

is Article is adapted from Federico Cheever & Jessica Owley,

Enhancing Conservation Options: An Argument for Statutory

Recognition of Options to Purchase Conservation Easements

(OPCEs), 40 H. E. L. R. 1 (2016), and is reprinted

with permission. Copyright in the Environmental Law Review is

held by the President and Fellows of Harvard College, and copyright

in the Article is held by the authors.

Copyright © 2017 Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, DC. Reprinted with permission from ELR®, http://www.eli.org, 1-800-433-5120.