Conservation easements are often ideal ways to protect environmentally important lands. Now, landowners in Bedford who help protect their communities' open space by protecting their property can get larger federal and state tax breaks. Under a new federal law, donors of conservation easements can take a charitable tax deduction of up to 50 percent of their adjusted gross income. Before, the limit was 30 percent. Now landowners can spread out the deduction over 16 years. Previously it was six years.

Further, a recent New York State law allows conservation easement donors, new and old, to get a 25 percent annual "rebate" on the property taxes they pay on their protected land, to a maximum of $5,000 a year. In Bedford more than a thousand acres have been protected through conservation easements. Because of the changes to the federal and state laws an even greater amount of important watershed, habitat and open space land will now be protected.

A conservation easement is a legally enforceable promise to preserve all or part of the open space on your property permanently. Conservation easements respect private property rights yet provide the public benefit of protecting natural resources. Easement donors continue to own and enjoy their land and control access to it; conservation easement can provide for public access only at the landowner's discretion.

Conservation easements are donated to qualified not-for-profit organizations, such as Westchester Land Trust, which guarantee that the terms of the easement and the environmental characteristics it encompasses are protected forever. Westchester Land Trust currently holds about 150 easements, including 60 in Bedford.

Source: 2007 BRLA Fall Newsletter