Foothills Land Conservancy celebrates 40 years of helping property owners save and enhance their land
The Foothills Land Conservancy has its roots in helping the peaceful side of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park to stay that way.
Sometime in the 1970s there was a move afoot to bring a theme park, Smokyworld, to the Townsend area. “I remember sitting at my kitchen table reading about this proposed monstrosity and thinking ‘This is not going to happen without a fight,’” recounts local landowner Gail Harris. A meeting was called to organize Alternatives for Blount County (ABC), a nonprofit with a mission to advocate for growth management. Smokyworld went away, in part because of the public opposition. But what didn’t end was the desire to protect the county from indiscriminate development.
Over time, ABC evolved into Foothills Land Conservancy (FLC), and Gail served as its first president. Land was donated by local residents and resold with conservation easements to protect them from development. Eventually the nonprofit hired an executive director, Randy Brown.
Again, from Gail: “Randy was an expert in raising funds. Under his leadership, millions of dollars were raised to purchase large tracts of undeveloped land around the Smokies and elsewhere. He organized huge gatherings of FLC members and friends and enlisted the support of people like Lamar Alexander. It was with Randy’s leadership that the FLC came to be known and respected in the greater community as a powerful conservation organization, leading the way in preserving dwindling areas of fragile beauty, wilderness and farmland.”
Establishing Easements
Twenty years ago, Bill Clabough followed Randy as executive director and, as property prices skyrocketed, FLC shifted its focus from purchasing land to protecting it, helping property owners establish conservation easements on their deeds that prevent future owners from developing it. When he was hired, FLC had 18 conservation easements in place. Today, Bill says, there are 540 in seven states throughout the Southeast. In all, more than 200,000 acres are protected.
The largest conservation easement they’ve arranged covers 3,700 acres of former coal mining territory in Campbell County. Another big one is the Fourman Tract, 1,000 acres in Roane County that is managed by Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency as part of the Mt. Roosevelt Wildlife Management Area. The smallest tract covers two acres of Knox County managed by Legacy Parks Association. And the farthest away is 678 acres in Chesterfield County, Virginia, near Richmond.
In addition to determining land use, conservation easements can also offer significant federal income tax benefits, Bill says. The primary tax incentive is an income tax deduction, based on the appraised value of the easement. In some cases, easements may also result in reduced property assessments at the state or local level, but their main tax benefit is income tax deduction. However, because some groups were over-inflating property values in the past, tax attorneys have become more cautious, and the pace of establishing new easements has slowed, he says.
An FLC staff member — there are four full-time employees — or a biologist contracted by FLC for some out-of-state properties — visits each property with a conservation easement at least once a year. They monitor the properties to ensure there are no stewardship issues, such as trespassing, no unauthorized forestry activities nor environmental concerns.
Betty and Paul Smith of Clinton were two such owners with an easement. They purchased 110 acres of land in Anderson County between Clinton and Rocky Top (then Lake City) in the 1960s and raised cattle on it for years. After Paul died in 2018 without making his wishes known about the land (the Smiths did not live on the property and there is no house on it), Betty’s daughter Barbara learned about FLC. Though the land is leased to another cattle farmer, it is also under a conservation easement. The easement states that only one single-family house can ever be built on the property and no trees can be cut unless they are dying or diseased.
“I couldn’t stand to see the trees cut down and the land broken up into subdivisions of great big houses. To me that wasn’t the thing to do,” Betty says. “It has lots of wildflowers, lots of trees: hickory, walnut, buckeye. We enjoyed farming it and taking care of it. To me it’s very special, and I hope it stays that way.”
Joel and Kathy Zachry in Kingston share that sentiment. Longtime environmental educators and outdoors enthusiasts, they created a conservation easement on their 17 acres about 10 years ago. They think of their land as an important corridor between residential developments for wildlife to move to and from the Tennessee River. They enjoy seeing deer, small game, turkeys and turtles on their property. “It’s a protected oasis amidst all the development,” Joel says.
They arranged their easement so they can build another home on the property if they decide to, but that stipulation goes away upon their deaths. “The house can be replaced on the same footprint as our current home, but beyond that the land can never be developed. What’s great about the easements is you can craft them the way you want them,” he says.
Some property owners, especially those without heirs, opt to bequeath their property to FLC upon their passing. Protected by conservation easements, the land can be sold to benefit the work of the Conservancy, but never developed.
Land Management and Environmental Protection
In addition to showing landowners how to protect their land, FLC’s director of natural resources Shelby Lyn Sanders also helps them manage it in environmentally conscious ways. When she visits for one of those monitoring visits, she walks the property with the owner and tries to ensure they appreciate what they have.
“We talk about native plants and supporting pollinators, which lots of people are interested in learning about,” she says. “We may talk about creating wildflower meadows or removing invasive species.”
FLC also partners with other environmental groups on special projects. MTM Environmental Consulting LLC has a project to provide nest boxes for American kestrels near farmland and open fields to support nesting success. Shelby Lynn encourages FLC members to get involved and has placed about 10 nest boxes around the area. The project will eventually contribute to scientific knowledge about the species, and landowners will have the advantage of kestrels hunting the mice around their farm.
Working with the Xerces Society, a leading authority on pollinator studies, FLC tracks the pollinator population on the land where its offices are located. Three times during the summer, volunteers gather on a Saturday to capture the pollinators visiting the property’s meadows. They capture about 100 bees in plastic test tubes and then put them on ice. While the bees are dormant, they identify the species and record the types of plants that attracted them. In June they found four species of bees that were drawn mostly to native species of bee balm and coneflowers. Shelby Lyn says all the bees captured also warmed up and flew away.
40 Years and the Future
Foothills Land Conservancy is celebrating 40 years of existence this year, refocusing much of its work right here in East Tennessee, Bill says. “We want to become more involved in conservation and environment projects here. In addition to protecting property, we are working with owners to enhance it: clean up streams and address invasive species, protect our wetlands and our native species. We have a great board of directors who are very supportive of our staff and our initiatives. We’re very solid financially. And I’ve been very fortunate to have a great staff to work with.”
FLC’s offices are located in the old farmhouse on Gail Harris’s property, bringing its present full circle with its past, with the mission that began with protecting our mountain serenity.
“I am so proud of what the Foothills Land Conservancy has accomplished over the years, somewhat astonished at its success (who knew?) and very grateful to the many, many people who have worked to further its mission,” Gail says.
To learn more about the Foothills Land Conservancy and follow along as they celebrate their 40th year, visit foothillsland.org.
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