by Cassandra Stephenson
On the first day that Dan and Zita Elrod stepped foot on a plot of wooded land with a cabin overlooking the Duck River, they spotted an eagle in flight from the back porch.
They were in the market for a peaceful respite from city life, and they took the eagle as a sign. They were sold.
In 2025, nearly two decades later, the couple decided they wanted to preserve the property. They entered into a conservation easement, a voluntary legal agreement between a landowner and a land trust that conserves property by permanently restricting how that land can be used.
The Elrods’ roughly 42 acres overlooking the most biodiverse freshwater river in North America will remain just as they want it — a cabin surrounded by acres of forest — in perpetuity, even if the Elrods decide to sell or bequeath the land some day.
“This is one of the few opportunities you have in this world to do something that’s permanent,” Dan Elrod told the Lookout.
The Elrods’ land is among thousands of acres conserved in 2025 through sales and partnerships with land trusts, conservation organizations and state agencies.
That protected land includes more than 7,400 acres of bottomland hardwood forest along the Hatchie River that is now a wildlife management area in West Tennessee — a property that multiple land trusts, nonprofits and state agencies worked for years to secure.
Land conserved by private citizens like the Elrods through conservation easements also makes up thousands of the total acres protected in the last year, according to The Land Trust for Tennessee and TennGreen Land Conservancy, nonprofits that work with landowners to preserve natural resources and farmland.
TennGreen Director of Communications Jon D. Bumpus said the organization preserved roughly 3,200 acres in 2025 through a combination of voluntary, landowner-driven conservation easements and land acquisitions. The Land Trust for Tennessee conserved just under 1,000 acres with private landowners last year, mostly in Middle Tennessee, the trust’s Senior Conservation Project Manager Jackson Lundy said.
These properties contain forests, rivers, pastures, a waterfall and habitats for rare, threatened and endangered species. They also have deep personal value to their owners, many of whom seek conservation easements to ensure their land retains its character for future generations, Bumpus and Lundy said.
Both organizations are hopeful that the Farmland Preservation Act — a law passed by the Tennessee General Assembly in 2025 that sets aside $25 million for grants for farmland and forest owners who place their land in conservation easements — will open the door for more landowners once the grant program is finalized this year.
A public rule-making hearing for the act is scheduled for Feb. 12.
“We’ve been overwhelmed with interest,” Lundy said.
How Conservation Easements Work
The Elrods partnered with The Land Trust for Tennessee for their conservation easement, which took about six months to complete.
Every conservation easement is different, with restrictions on the land created with the landowner “to fit their needs and their desires for how they want their property to be used in the future,” Lundy said.
Easements may restrict the land from being used for certain types of development, like subdivisions, but can still allow farm activity, agricultural buildings, and even timber harvesting, so long as it’s done in keeping with forest management best practices. Each agreement is specific to the land in question, the landowners’ future goals and the land trust’s conservation goals.
“I think a lot of landowners understandably have a visceral reluctance to do something that’s going to really affect (their) land, or that’s going to tie (them) up or take away options,” Dan Elrod said. “Well, you can maintain options as you want to in the process. There’s a lot more flexibility than folks realize.”
Lundy said The Land Trust for Tennessee wants to make as many things available to landowners as possible for future use, but if someone wants to build 20 houses on their farm, “that might not be a good fit for a conservation easement.”
Once the ink dries, the landowners retain ownership of their land.
“They can sell it, they can pass it to heirs, but the conservation easement stays with the deed of the property so that whoever owns it in the future still has to uphold the conservation values that we agreed on,” Amy Frankel, marketing and communications manager for The Land Trust, said.
Lundy works with landowners who are interested in conservation easements and helps them through the process. Last year, he received more than 400 inquiries. The organization uses a screening process that considers farmland use, climate change resilience, water quality, wildlife habitat, historic sites, scenic land and other attributes to determine which projects will best serve The Land Trust’s conservation goals.
After the easement is official, The Land Trust continues to work with landowners to ensure those terms are maintained. They visit each property every year to monitor conditions and keep a relationship with the landowner. In total, The Land Trust has conserved roughly 137,000 across more than 460 conservation easements since its inception in 1999.
If a land trust or conservation easement holder ceases to operate, easements can be legally transferred to another entity to continue stewardship.
Bumpus describes conservation easements as the closest to a “forever clause” a landowner can get.
“It’s not something that can be circumnavigated by state or federal institutions, through the government that we have in place now,” Bumpus said.
Conservation easements do come with costs for the land surveys, appraisals and attorney services needed to put them into place. Landowners who enter into conservation easements may be eligible for tax benefits, but up-front costs can be barriers for some who would otherwise be interested.
Bumpus said he’s looking forward to the release of grant funding from the Farmland Protection Act, which could cover those costs and allow farmers to protect their land for free.
“That is one of the things that makes me emotional, getting to do this work, because so many of my friends that are in agriculture … they’re very land rich … but it’s so hard to run agriculture in Tennessee, and America in general, (that) you’re not able to save money on the side,” said Bumpus, who owns a small ranch in Goodlettsville where he raises cattle.
“We’ve helped with some funding for conservation easements on agricultural land before, and it’s an unreal feeling,” he said. “It gives me goosebumps every time I think about it, looking someone in the eyes who’s been on their land for 90 years, and it’s seven generations old, and telling them they’re not going to lose it, is, I think, the most powerful thing I’ve ever been a part of.”
Land Purchases and State Parks
Organizations like TennGreen, The Nature Conservancy in Tennessee and many others also work to conserve land through acquisitions, often pooling resources with each other to purchase land at risk of development.
Bumpus said TennGreen had a nearly even split of conservation easements and acquisitions last year, but the mix varies from year to year. The Nature Conservancy in Tennessee mostly conserves land through acquisitions — purchasing properties from willing sellers.
The Nature Conservancy in Tennessee chooses tracts of land based on biological diversity and the land’s resistance to climate change, Director of Land Gabby Lynch said.
She cites the Hatchie Bottoms project in West Tennessee as 2025’s “major exciting, uplifting win.”
“It’s one of those lifetime projects that you want to live to see happen, and it happened in 2025,” she said.
Multiple partners, including The Nature Conservancy, TennGreen, The Conservation Fund, Hatchie River Conservancy, Heritage Conservation Trust Fund, and Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency worked on the Hatchie expansion.
Land trusts and conservation organizations frequently work with state and federal agencies to acquire properties near parks, natural areas, wildlife refuges and management areas. Bumpus said conservation organizations are more nimble and can often purchase land and hold it so the state can turn it into a state park later, when it secures funds and clears red tape.
Tennessee opened its newest state park, Head of the Crow, in Franklin County in October 2025, made possible by more than a decade of work from conservation organizations and state agencies.
The park is now one of three parks in an area formerly known as South Cumberland State Park, which grew to protect more than 30,000 acres. Fiery Gizzard State Park in Grundy and Marion counties was also recognized as a distinct park in 2025.
Bumpus said a highlight of his year was attending the parks’ dedications.
“It feels bigger than you,” he said. “That involves the whole community, that involves the whole state, and that’s something that anybody in the world can come visit and appreciate and realize, wow, this stuff is really worth protecting.”
The Nature Conservancy in Tennessee is working toward protecting 50,000 new acres from 2020 to 2030. After 2025, they have protected about 80% of that goal, meaning they’re “ahead of schedule,” Lynch noted.
The Nature Conservancy began in 1978, and the Tennessee chapter also aims to reach a grand total of 500,000 acres of protected land throughout the state by 2030. They are now nearing 470,000 acres.
While Tennessee continues to grow, Lynch said she has a personal hope going into 2026 for Tennesseans.
“I would love if all of us who walk on this beautiful state that we live in really knew how special Tennessee is, because Tennessee has a lot of superlatives when we talk about biological diversity and climate change resilient habitats,” she said. It’s important, “not just for within the borders of Tennessee, but we’re actually a regionally important conservation state.”
