'Keeping Wyoming Wyoming'

PINEDALE - Conservation easements – a landowner's sale or donation of development rights in exchange for perpetual protection of an important agricultural landscape – are not new. 

But as Wyoming's rural counties face explosive growth of land costs, more ranch families and landowners are seriously considering conservation easements as a way to pass their livelihoods to the next generations. They are very detailed arrangements – contracts, really – and should involve the entire family. Some include some compensation for families to continue ranching without pressures to quit or so t...