As a large landowner, most of which is in woodland, I am not a big fan of the so called land protections and easements that abound out there, and for a lot of reasons. On the surface they do sound great, but there is a lot of fine print that gets taken out of the conversation when they are urging you to sign on the dotted line.
First off, there is no true Forever Farms or easements. Near me there was a school and on one side was a field ready to go for a subdivision and on the other a farm that was put under easement. The ink was not even dry when the school decided they wanted to expand and so rather than take the subdivision which had a much higher cost, yep they took the farm that had an easement (we call them Forever Farms here). Within a week hundreds of applications for Forever Farms were withdrawn here; we could see what happened; they could not back up what they said.
Even then it is not surprising because under the fine print, a farm protected by easement can still have a few acres taken out and sold off to "help in the finances of the forever farm". In other words they still have the rights to sell house lots off that farm...granted not hundreds of them, but that is certainly not what the landowner had in mind when they went with an easement (Forever Farm).
Finally there is actually a "fee" that the landowner must pay. To me this is ridiculous because at the rate landowners are currently losing our rights to land we pay property taxes on every year, to pay a fee so that we lose more of them just seems crooked...and for a promise they cannot back up since they can subdivide house lots and have land taken cheaply by eminent domain! You have to look at landownership like having a big bundle of sticks in your hand. Every stick represents a landowners right. It may be
water rights. It may be timber rights. It may be mineral rights. It may be the right to build, etc, etc, etc. What an easement does (or Forever Farm) they take some of those rights away, but you (and this is where it gets crazy) has to pay to have them taken away for an annual fee. Something is fishy in that, but that is what happens when a team of attorneys and former politicians runs these program!
Myself; my land is well managed. I have an excellent forester who manages my woodlots for me, and with the USDA I have a Rotational Grazing Plan, Crop Rotation Plan, Comprehensive Nutrient Management Plan (manure plan) and Forest Management Plan all in place. With the exception of my house, no acre is unaccounted for in terms of soil, water and air conservation. When it all boils down, many organizations out there simply want to exist to help farmers, when the reality is, we just need more farmers and less people trying to help us...or claim they are. In the meantime they are stealing money from the till in the form of committees, studies and non-profit organizations.