Conservation Easements
Keep your land intact for your family’s future generations, while protecting it from potential development.
Protect your land, preserve its legacy
A conservation easement is a voluntary legal agreement between a landowner and Sonoma Land Trust that permanently protects private land while allowing continued ownership and use. This flexible tool helps preserve open space, support agriculture, and safeguard natural resources.
A conservation easement is an ideal way to keep land intact for future generations. Each easement is tailored to the property and the landowner’s goals, whether that means limiting development, protecting farmland, ensuring sustainable forestry, or keeping natural areas healthy. Once recorded, the easement becomes a permanent part of the property deed, protecting the land forever.
While some landowners sell conservation easements, most choose to donate them. If the donation permanently protects important conservation values and meets federal requirements, it may qualify as a tax-deductible charitable gift. The donation’s value equals the difference between the land’s worth with and without the easement, and it may also provide property tax benefits.
Benefits of conservation easements
Leave a legacy by honoring your family’s roots while securing a sustainable future for the next generation.
Permanent Land Protection
Financial & Tax Advantages
Customize to Meet
Your Goals
Ward Creek Conservation Easement
Before 1979, there was no provision for placing a conservation easement on private property in California in perpetuity. As Bill Kortum described:
“There was no tool around, essentially we didn’t have a general plan. There were no funds to buy land…there was nothing.” (LeBaron 2006).
The work of all California land trusts got a significant boost in 1979 when the California Conservation Easement law went into effect, opening the way for awarding tax benefits to private landowners willing to extinguish or limit development rights on private property—becoming a viable tool that Sonoma Land Trust could use for permanent land protection.
Have questions about protecting your land with Sonoma Land Trust? Contact our Land Acquisitions Department at landinquiries@sonomalandtrust.org