keeps land pristine

By Amaris Elliott-Engel / The Citizen

A dramatic 90-foot spout of water and lesser falls named after a bridal veil run crystal clear over a limestone bed.

Carpenter's Falls - so named after a distillery owner - are the most dramatic enticements of the steep slopes of the Bear Swamp Creek ravine in Niles.

Last year, the private parcel that includes the falls was put up for sale and marketed as the perfect site for a trophy home.

Local conservationists worried that an aesthetic treasure would be lost to public access - trespassing has been tolerated more or less for generations - and that an ecological treasure would be lost as undamaged habitat. With the ability to move faster than state bureaucracy, an Ithaca-based group, the Finger Lakes Land Trust, purchased the property.

The group has an increasing presence in Cayuga County. In addition to the Carpenter's Falls acquisition and the plan to protect the creek between the falls and its mouth emptying into Skaneateles Lake, the group has recently been involved in negotiating a purchase agreement for a property in the Owasco Flats wetlands.

“I think development needs to be planned,” said Howard Hartnett, of Moravia, who has been a member of the FLLT's board for a few months and member of the advisory board for years before that. “To maintain the natural beauty we have is important, and the lake is an important thing. (The Finger Lakes) are important to natural beauty. They're important to economic development. They're important to recreation.”

The FLLT also founded a preserve in Summerhill with donations in the memory of Dorothy McIlory, a founder of the Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornell University. A rare 150-acre parcel of wetland at the southern tip of Lake Como has been under the group's protection since October 2003. The parcel also helps protect Fall Creek, which forms one of the university's gorges and supplies its drinking water.

It also is in negotiations with four Cayuga County landowners to develop conservation easements on their land. The FLLT partners on easements with property owners to institute permanent legal protection of landscapes that are high priority conservation efforts.

The group was established in 1989 to conserve land through the founding of nature preserves and easements on private property in all 12 Finger Lakes counties. In total, the group protects 8,000 acres in nature preserves it owns outright, in parcels protected in partnership with nonprofits or municipal governments; or in easements that property owners have entered into and that the FLLT is responsible for enforcing.

There are more than 1,500 land trusts in the United States, including urban land trusts in New York City and Chicago preserving parks and community gardens and land trusts out West preserving undeveloped ranchland.

“We lose to development sprawl two million acres a year,” said Jim Wyerman, the director of communications and development for the Land Trust Alliance, a Washington, D.C.-based representational organization for land trusts. “These nonprofits are protecting about 800,000 new acres a year. Each year that number is increasing. It's one of the most successful and unsung conservation success stories in the U.S. Together they've protected more land than all of the national parks in the lower 48 states.”

These conservation groups operate without government intervention, although local and state governments can be partners, as in the case with the Carpenter's Falls parcel. The trust has owned the Bahar natural preserve at the foot of the Bear Swamp Creek ravine since 1998. It also have a purchase agreement for the property that will connect their Carpenter's Falls property to the Bahar preserve. Ultimately, the spot will be sold to the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

The FLLT was instrumental in helping the Owasco Flats Nature Reserve negotiate a purchase agreement of a 15-acre wooded parcel on the Owasco Inlet between parcels owned by Cayuga County and the city of Auburn, said Jean Siracusa, of the Owasco Flats reserve group.

The parcel's purchase price comes in $16,400 from a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service small grants and $5,000 each from the FLLT, Ducks Unlimited Inc., the Nature Conservancy and the Owasco Valley Audubon Society.

Owasco Flats Nature Reserve will own the property, but FLLT will serve as a backup caretaker.

“This is a terrific example of a partnership that really works,” Siracusa said. “We're not politically connected. You're doing good things because you believe in them.”

The FLLT was executive director Andrew Zepp's brainchild. It was his master's project while completing graduate work at Cornell University. He had worked with land trusts in New England and saw that the Finger Lakes could root a similar organization. He recruited and trained board members. Then he worked for other organizations, including the country's largest land trust, the Nature Conservancy, but he came back to the FLLT three years ago.

The FLLT has five full-time staff and three part-time staff, a number that includes two volunteers who are donating their wages.

“It seemed like the Finger Lakes Land Trust was doing things to conserve land and that really was motivating rather than trying to stop things from happening,” said Jim Kersting, the president of the trust's board and a conservation easement donor on his Canadice Lake property. “Taking actions to cause things to be saved was really rewarding.”

Kersting and his wife, Sara, live on one of the western Finger Lakes that is the reservoir for Rochester. They decided to develop an easement for their land to keep a public water source clean and to keep the lake view undisturbed. The property can never be subdivided again.

“It's not really protected unless it's protected for our children's children's children,” Kersting said.

In Kersting's time, volunteering with the group, its staff size has grown and its membership base has grown to 1,500 members.

The trust protects its largest number of acres in easements, which is the fastest way land trusts are conserving land.

Conservation easements have a historical precedent in English common law that allowed neighbors to cross another neighbor's property. The first conservation easements were created in the early 1900s by the federal government to protect the view from George Washington's Mount Vernon and the view on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Then in the 1980s, most states passed conservation easement statues, creating a clear legal pathway to allow for private owners to determine that their parcels could be preserved in a certain state forever.

Elaine and Vic Mansfield, of Hector, Schuyler County, decided to convey an easement on their 70 acres with a view of Seneca Lake and bordering the Finger Lakes National Forest after a neighbor hired a logger who clear-cut that property and didn't preserve younger trees to renew the forest.

“It was the most alarming, sad butchery we could not imagine,” Elaine Mansfield said.

Preserving the land allows a corridor for wildlife to move unmolested from the national forest. Oak, maple, hickory and poplar trees are being managed in a forest program approved by the FLLT and developed under the guidance of a certified forester.

Under the conditions of the easement, the Mansfield's home can be maintained on the property. It can't be subdivided much, but 10 to 12 acres close to the road can be used for horses or other backyard farm animals. Another roadside home would be allowed. On the rest of the acreage, future owners of the property must focus on the “long-term health of the forest rather than short-term financial gain,” Mansfield said.

For the FLLT's part, it promises to enforce the conservation easement forever and make sure that future owners do not buy the parcel, cut all the trees down or otherwise detrimentally develop it.

Mansfield said they worried about losing the value of a property they have owned since 1972, but they realized that there is a market for land like that is good for riding horses and connects to the national forest.

“They're not making land like this,” Elaine said.

Elaine advised it is an involved and a lengthy process to convey an easement. It involved a few thousand dollars. The donation of the land was a tax write-off, but it also involved lawyer's fees and a land survey and assessment.

An easement must include the limitations that are placed on it and what rights and uses are to be maintained for the future. The Internal Revenue Service also requires maps, photographs and a legal survey detailing the condition of the property if landowners are donating the easement for a tax deduction.

Zepp said landowners considering an easement should involve their families in deciding to so definitively determine the character of their property for the future. The land trust doesn't hurry landowners through the involved process, Zepp said.

Not all land qualifies for an easement either, Zepp added. The FLLT weighs if there is enough regional significance and public interest for a parcel to have permanent protection. The last undeveloped lakeshores, the last remaining intact forests and prime agriculture farmland are top priorities. And most of these properties have been identified already by government, Zepp said.

The FLLT enforces the easements by monitoring the properties with annual visits. If any violations can't be resolved amicably, then FLLT could go to court to enforce the legal document.

Zepp believes that it's a false choice for Finger Lakes property owners to feel they must choose between development or preservation.

“Just as we need roads and other infrastructure, we need a green infrastructure to ensure that for the future,” Zepp said.

Staff writer Amaris Elliott-Engel can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 282 or at amaris.elliot-engel@lee.net