Our mission is to conserve the open space, wildlife habitat, water quality, and scenery of the Palouse.

We share information about conservation easements and make referrals.

Conservation easements enable farmers and other private landowners to protect and conserve open space, wildlife habitat, and favorite views. Conservation easements are legal agreements between a landowner and a land trust that permanently limit uses of land.  Because they are very flexible, easements can allow continued agricultural or forest production, or limited development.

A conservation easement permits landowners to:
* Protect what is special about their land
* Control future development and uses of their land
* Pass land from one generation to the next with reduced inheritance taxes
* Gain significant income and estate tax advantages

Palouse Land Trust's easement criteria.

The Palouse landscape has many special places that people value for a variety of reasons. (To find out more about the Palouse region, go to What is the Palouse? under RESTORING NATIVE PALOUSE HABITATS on the Projects page.)

• We value some places for the crops they produce, the rural lifestyle they support, or the views they offer.
• Other places are important because they provide windows to the past or because they are part of our natural or our cultural legacy.

Regardless of the kinds of places we value, we all have places that are special to us.

• Sometimes we want to see these places kept as they are.  We may worry that our favorite places will be turned into strip malls or golf courses.  We find ourselves wishing we could keep these places as they are.
• Sometimes we have memories of special places from our past that have been changed beyond recognition.  Or we might wish we had been around to see places that our grandparents told us about or that we have read about.  We find ourselves wishing that we could bring back those special places.

Regardless of whether we want to preserve some land as it is or restore it to what it was, there are steps we can take to make those dreams a reality.

• If we wish to keep land that we own as it is or to control the way it will be used in the future, we can use voluntary agreements, or easements to do this.
• If we wish to return a place to what it used to be, then we have to take steps to restore it.

On the Projects page:

    Click on PROJECTS to find examples of conservation easements that have been used to protect open spaces in the Palouse;

    Click on RESTORING NATIVE PALOUSE HABITATS for information about natural habitats of the Palouse, why they have become rare, how they have been altered, and what can be done to restore them.