Conservation easements can work in certain situations and may be the right tool for some people who are in need of a cash infusion to maintain their operation.
The difficulty some of us have with conservation easements, in particular, the Nature Conservancy, is that these conservation easements are in perpetuity, forever. That's a pretty big step for, say, someone like me to make for my children and their children. I'm not sure that everything will always be the same and that the best use of that land will always be represented by Nature Conservancy.
The other issue we have with Nature Conservancy, as Bob mentioned, is the ability or inability of the operator to manage and control as he formerly did. It depends on the skill of the negotiator and how badly Nature Conservancy wants a piece of this particular property.
The other aspect about it that bothers some of us is that recently Nature Conservancy has had the use of, I believe, $760 million of taxpayers' money to go out into the marketplace and compete with individual landowners who may be wanting to purchase that property as well. If it were private dollars raised by Nature Conservancy from people who thought conservation in this particular area was appropriate, most of us would have no trouble with that at all. But to have to compete with taxpayers' dollars if you want to buy a neighbouring ranch that Nature Conservancy wants is patently unfair and we don't believe it should happen.
Thank you.