Talk:Land trust

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I am editing the page on land trusts because it appears that the prior authors work only in the conservation land trust area and were unaware that those are only a small part of all the land trusts that exist. I believe that a lot of readers would value information on the other types of land trusts and that all types should be included. A land trust is not an organization as stated in the original article, it is a legal agreement. But it can be used by an organization and that organization might name itself Xyz Land Trust. But technically a trust is a written agreement between a trustee and a beneficiary. Just to show that I know what I am talking about, and not as an advertising, I am the attorney author of the book "Land Trusts for Privacy & Profit" and am the owner of a trust company, Land Trust Service Corporation, which is trustee for hundreds of properties for individuals. This is my first Wiki post so sorry if I've committed any faux pas.

MWarda 6 Sept 2006

Hello, I found some problems with this article and thought I would contribute my notes to someone who might rework the Land Trust entry.

First, the last sentence of "Community land trusts" doesn't make gramatical sense. In fact, it's not really clear what the author is trying to say with the sentence at all.

Where I am doing my research is conservation land trusts. The author notes that 6.2 million acres of land are held by conservation land trusts. That's not completely accurate, that number just represents the number of acres held by local and regional conservation land trusts (which is stated in the article he/she cites).

http://www.lta.org/aboutlta/census.shtml

This next article has a few numbers on national conservation land trusts, but speculates that complete and accurate numbers aren't available.

http://www.nmagriculture.org/landtrust.htm

Hope that helps.

204.151.97.189 15:22, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I would suggest that the conservation section needs to rewritten in its entirety. The community trusts need to be labeled as ‘community housing trusts’ so as not to confuse the general public with the work carried out by the over 1500 land trusts in the US and Canada. The majority of land trusts are not endowed or blessed with large donations, but their successes can be directly attributed to the cumulative effect of multiple small donations within a specific community, those donations are coupled with the generosity of a landowner to secure permanent protection for a parcel of land. The majority of the work involves the securing of conservation easements and has for some time- the report prepared by PERC (a right wing, market based/property rights advocacy think tank in Bozeman, Mt.) is a Johnny comes lately analysis that suggests that this is something the conservation groups ought to be doing. Most land trusts in Montana pre-date PERC’s creation. There is certainly the potential for the use of carbon sequestration credits or transferable development rights as we go forward into the future but the primary task of land trusts is the preservation and conservation of land.

February 8, 2006: I edited and enlarged the conservation section. I believe it to be much more accurate, and I used updated figures. I delisted it. 70.179.57.88