Trust in the Land: New Directions in Tribal Conservation

2. Context of Private Conservation

2 Context of Private Conservation The use and applicability of private conservation tools, such as conservation easements and land trusts or conservancies, has expanded exponentially over the last two decades. According to the 2005 land trust census taken by the Land Trust Alliance (LTA), there were 1,667 land trusts in the United States, up 32 percent from 2000.1 The 2005 census calculated the total acreage conserved by local, state, and national land trusts at 37 million acres, or “an area 16 and one-half times the size of Yellowstone National Park.” As of 2009, the number of land trusts surpassed 1,700.2 The overall rate of proliferation of land trusts in the last two decades has been similarly astonishing. In Mary Ann King and Sally Fairfax’s analysis of the LTA census, for example, the number of land trusts ha[d] increased 26 percent between 1998 and 2003 alone. The number of [conservation easements] . . . also increased dramatically in the same period. Total acreage conserved by local and regional land trusts doubled, from 4.7 million to 8.4 million , and [conservation easements] account for most of that increase: local and regional land trusts hold 17,847 [easements], up from 7,392 in 1998, and the total acreage protected by [those easements] has increased 266 percent since 1998.3 This analysis only includes local and regional land trusts, and not the rate of protection by international land trusts, such as The Nature Conservancy , and national land trusts, such as The Conservation Fund and the Trust for Public Land. Still, private conservation through direct purchase of land by trusts or the use of conservation easements is growing at a much 8 TRUST IN THE LAND faster rate than parks, preserves, wilderness areas, and other methods of public conservation. But what do land trusts do? What communities do they serve? Within a context of neocolonial conservation policy, do they act to increase equity and justice? Or do they simply protect lands for privileged, middle- and upper-class nature lovers? Since the incentives for conservation that land trusts provide may have greater appeal for individuals with financial or property-based assets, can they really enable rural people to continue to work farms, forests, and ranches that have ceased, in a globalized economy, to support themselves?4 And which rural people may benefit? Rural workers? Or rural landowners? Or both? Finally, will land trusts really continue “in perpetuity”? The questions surrounding the purpose of utilizing land trusts and conservation easements are many, and this book focuses specifically on how land trusts and conservation easements can support, rather than encroach upon, Native lands. Although land trusts have recently proliferated, the concept of purchasing land and setting it aside for conservation is not new in the United States. Citizen groups working together to preserve local resources have been around since well before the term “land trust” came about.5 Sally K. Fairfax and her coauthors describe such early private conservation organizations as the Bunker Hill Monument Association, formed in 1823 to raise funds to memorialize the American Revolution, and the Mt. Vernon Ladies Association, which bought George Washington’s estate in 1861.6 Most scholars of land trusts also point to the Boston-based “Trustees of [Public] Reservations,” founded in 1891, as one of the oldest private land trusts in the United States.7 Although the Trustees promulgated a notion of purchasing historic and scenic land and holding it for public benefit, we have to imagine that the meaning of the deserving “public” was very different at that time, and it did not include most Native Americans or African Americans. This raises the question of what “public” is being served by contemporary private conservation. In many cases the “public good” does not include formal participation of ancestral owners of the land (tribal members), and it does not provide mechanisms for ensuring the protection and stewardship of culturally important places. To return to the history of private-land conservation, as Fairfax and her coauthors remind us, “Private actors have played a vital role in acquisition and conservation efforts for more than 180 years.”8 The early Anglo private acquisitions, with some federal funding and support, took place in a climate of “strong property rights and weak federal authority.”9 Similarly, during the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations, when those conditions Context of Private Conservation 9 also existed, the number of land trusts increased...