|
articles & updates | article
Ethics Plenary Speech
by Stephen J. Small, Esq.
Let me go back to twenty minutes ago. I said that a fundamental premise in the way the tax rules work is that the first line of defense against bad conservation easement donations is the land trust community. I think this approach has worked for twenty years, and will continue to work, but now we need to move on to the next level of competence, we need to continue to warrant that level of confidence. If we don't step up we run the risk of someone else coming in - the media, uninformed legislators, government regulators - we run the risk of someone else coming in and having a measurable adverse impact on what has been an enormously successful movement to date - not perfect but enormously successful.
I want to see the land trust movement move toward required continuing education. I want to see the land trust movement move toward accreditation. I have heard some people in this room say, we're not ready for accreditation, we're not prepared, and I think that may be part of the problem. Some of you are not prepared. I would like to see that change and I would like to see LTA take a more active role in supporting and accrediting good strong well-run ethical land trusts and not supporting and not accrediting those land trusts that don't do the job right and to the highest standards.
Final observation, at the risk of repeating myself. LTA can reach out to the land trust community to provide support and services but there truly is a limit to what LTA can do. You need to educate yourselves, you need to educate your boards, you need to educate professionals in your communities, you need to educate your constituency, you can really reach to the grass roots. You can take the high road.
Saving land in this country is not a new idea. Let me leave you with a quote from Thoreau:
"What are the natural features which make a township handsome? A river, with its waterfalls and meadows, a lake, a hill, a cliff or individual rocks, a forest, and ancient trees standing singly. Such things are beautiful; they have a high use which dollars and cents never represent. If the inhabitants of a town were wise, they would seek to preserve these things, though at considerable expense; for such things educate far more than any hired teachers or preachers...
"It would be worth the while if in each town there were a committee appointed to see that the beauty of the town received no detriment..."
Thoreau didn't know it, but he was talking about land trusts.
|
