Protecting & Preserving your Land
As open space continues to disappear around us, many landowners across America are taking steps to conserve the land they love for future generations. They know undeveloped properties provide clean air and water, wildlife habitat, and scenic beauty. In Colebrook, when you permanently preserve your land, you join a special group of landowners from all parts of town and all walks of life who wanted to do their part in preserving our town’s remarkable rural character.
Your Conservation Options
Most of the property protected by the Colebrook Land Conservancy has been donated by generous landowners, and, with the help of grants and community support, the Conservancy purchased portions of the former Hale Farm, the Corliss 100 wilderness and Deer Hill. Today, the Conservancy owns 730 acres and holds conservation easements on another 571 acres.
Donation of Land
Most of the land the Conservancy owns outright has been gifted by donors who wanted to have a lasting impact on the future landscape of our town and protect its natural resources. Gifting land may result in income tax and estate tax benefits for the donor as well as eliminating future Colebrook property taxes.
Conservation Easements
Almost half of the land protected by the Colebrook Land Conservancy is by conservation easement, which is a voluntary legal agreement between a landowner and an entity such as a land trust that permanently protects the land’s conservation values by limiting its development or use. With conservation easements, you retain ownership of the land and decide what rights you might wish to keep. The land has restrictions placed on it agreed to by you and the land trust, which has responsibility for monitoring the property and upholding the terms of the easement. You may sell the property or pass it on to heirs, but the easement’s conditions are binding on future owners of the land. As with an outright donation of land, granting a conservation easement that meets certain federal tax code requirements can result in income tax and estate tax benefits. At the present time, conservation easements do not reduce Colebrook property taxes.
Getting Started
There are several other conservation options available to you besides donating your land and placing a conservation easement on it. You can learn more about all of your options at the Land Trust Alliance web site, www.landtrustalliance.org. Click on What you can do. Or go to the Connecticut Land Conservation Council web site at www.ctconservation.org and click on Resources, For Landowners.
As you consider this important decision, the Colebrook Land Conservancy is ready to discuss your individual situation with you. Just send us an email to info@colebrooklandconservancy.org.
It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility.
Colebrook: How Can We Protect its Special Character?
Every day, we who live in Colebrook enjoy a rare privilege: a rural community, still largely untouched.
We have green roadsides, we have space, we have vistas, we have old homesteads in their fields, we have historic districts preserving our unspoiled centers. We are still spared overcrowding.
Many of us feel this atmosphere is worth protecting. Indeed, we realize it is essential to life as we know it in Colebrook. And that, without some special effort, it cannot last.
That’s why the Colebrook Land Conservancy urges each and every property owner to consider how he can help conserve the character of our town. You can do this by taking steps to restrict overuse of your own land. Together, we can pass on to future generations the gift of a town still proudly displaying much of its rural past.
Nancy Phelps Blum, 1990
Founder, The Colebrook Land Conservancy
The Colebrook Land Conservancy
Post Office Box 90
Colebrook, Connecticut 06021
info@colebrooklandconservancy.org
Our Mission
Preserve and conserve the special and unique characteristics of Colebrook—rural, historic and scenic—using accepted land conservation techniques and education in cooperation with the Town, the community and other groups.