Preserve environmentally sensitive, community-valued land by placing a conservation easement on city lands, and by encouraging/funding private landowners to place land in conservation easements.
Best Practice of this action
Rating Guideline
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Actively encourage landowners to place conservation easements on their land. |
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Place at least one conservation easement on city land; conservation easements required on all wetlands/wetland buffers during entitlement; city recommends that land developers deed wetlands to city. |
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Provide funding to encourage private landowner easements; adopt or participate in a purchase of development rights or transfer of development rights program. |
Resources
- Use the DNR’s Minnesota Conservation Explorer to identify Natural Heritage Information System data for both conservation planning and identifying rare resources. See BPA 10.1 to learn more about identifying preservation areas.
- The Minnesota Land Trust protects undeveloped shoreline, shallow lakes, undisturbed forest, prairies, and other ecologically important and community-valued areas statewide by advising landowners and local communities and by managing conservation easements placed on such lands. The Reinvest in Minnesota (RIM) Reserve Program, administered by the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources, pays private landowners to voluntarily retire environmentally sensitive lands from agricultural production by enrolling land in a conservation easement.
- Municipalities in Minnesota are authorized by the Legislature to create purchase of development rights and transfer of development rights programs. PDR programs exist in Washington and Dakota Counties. TDR programs, applicable in urban areas, are not known to exist in any Minnesota city.
- The Nature Conservancy's Floodplain Prioritization Tool helps identify critical opportunities for floodplain conservation and restoration in the Mississippi River Basin.
Order Number
5
Action Type
Finite