The Texas Land Trends project of Texas A&M’s Natural Resources Institute, or NRI, has published a special series report describing Texas landowner participation in land conservation easements and their value to agricultural production, water and wildlife.
About 83 percent of lands in Texas are classified as privately-owned working lands, signifying the critical role private landowners play in protecting the state’s valuable resources. Land-use conversion, including fragmentation, accounted for the loss of approximately 1.1 million acres of working lands in Texas between 1997 to 2012.
“A conservation easement is a voluntary agreement between a landowner and a qualified nonprofit land trust or government entity through which the landowner commits to minimize or avoid certain types of non-agricultural development on their property by selling or donating certain property rights,” said NRI director Dr. Roel Lopez.
Read more from Paul Schattenberg with AgriLife Today here.