LAND continues to watch conservation easements. We breathed a sigh of relief when all five bills dealing with perpetual easements were defeated during the last legislative session. The issue will not go away, however.

The summer issue of the North Dakota Wetlands Trust (Now known as the North Dakota Natural Resources Trust) Newsletter dealt primarily with permanent conservation easements and in the words of Keith Trego, executive director of the Trust, "this is an issue that will be back during the next legislative session if not sooner."

Keith Trego and everyone else I have heard promoting perpetual easements try to drive home their view that a property owner has the right to sell a perpetual easement on their property. This is only partially true and is also the reason so many perpetual easement bills appeared before the legislature last session.

A property owner can sell a perpetual easement to the Federal government and no one else (except utility and public service companies). The North Dakota Wetland Trust has authority presently to purchase 30 year easements. I wonder why they are not satisfied with 30 year easements? If these agreements are so good for the landowner I would think the landowner would be waiting at the door of the Trust to renew when the 30 years is up.

Eco-logic recently reprinted an article that originally appeared in 1997 concerning a 1976 United Nations meeting in Vancouver. The meeting was titled "United Nations Conference on Human Settlements." I would like to share with you some excerpts of conclusions of that meeting.

Private land ownership.....contributes to social injustice

All countries should establish as a matter of urgency a national policy on human settlements...to facilitate population redistribution.

Public ownership or effective control of land...is the single most important means of ...assuring that environmental impacts are considered.

Past patterns of ownership rights should be transformed to match the changing needs of society

Methods for the separation of land ownership rights from development rights, the latter to be entrusted to a public authority. (Doesn't this sound like conservation easements?)

These sentiments can be found as the basic principle behind more public policy than I am comfortable with. CARA, conservation easements, Klamath Falls, Oregon are all symptoms of the pervasive nature of these sentiments.

We need to be vigilant. We need to support and unite with those who believe in the right to own property. We need to be well informed. LAND hopes to be all of these, in service to our members.