Kaplan Kirsch & Rockwell has a national reputation for expertise in conservation easements and land conservation law.  We have more than 40 years’ experience counseling clients regarding conservation easements and other conservation transactions and techniques.  We have represented landowners and land trusts in hundreds of conservation easement transactions and we routinely work with landowners who are buying or selling rural recreational properties and other special landscapes.  We advise other conservation organizations as well as federal, state, county, municipal wildlife, and open space agencies, and serve as counsel to many national, state, and local land trusts.

Conservation easements are an essential part of the land use lawyer’s toolbox, enabling clients to meet land preservation and open space goals, and to be eligible for tax benefits—including marketable tax credits in some states.  We counsel clients on the use of conservation easements in many different situations, including as a component to facilitate multi-party land exchanges and to close real estate transactions with both preservation and development aspects.  Owners of land under conservation easement, particularly working ranches, turn to us for assistance in maintaining the preserved lands intact from competing land uses and assertions of conflicting rights, such as oil and gas development and other access issues.

We have been involved in countless conservation easement transactions that have resulted in the protection of hundreds of thousands of acres.  Our experience is both broad and deep, including service on the board of directors of the Land Trust Alliance and as counsel to state and local trust coalitions, state and local land trusts, and as founding counsel to the Country’s first producer-based agricultural land trusts.

Our attorneys have experience with conservation easement-related legislation and have authored legislation pertaining to conservation easements and property tax, conservation easements and water rights, and state tax credits.  We also represent taxpayers in disputes with the Internal Revenue Service and state taxing authorities pertaining to conservation easements and assist landowners and conservation easement holders in interpreting amendments and assessing and resolving violations of conservation easements.

Representative Projects

• Represented the owner of the Greenland Ranch in the update and consolidation of several conservation easements and the transfer of the conservation easement to Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust.
• Represented the owners of the 50,000 acre Banded Peak Ranch  in a series of  conservation easements that protect a magnificent landscape along the headwaters of the Navajo River.
• Represented the Forbes Trinchera Ranch in the conveyance of a conservation easement of more than 80,000 acres, the largest in Colorado at the time.
• Handled conservation easement sales for various families in the $1 million to $10 million range.
• Served as landowner counsel in the acquisition of 137,000-acre, national park-quality, rural recreation land in Las Animas County, Colorado.
• Served as landowner counsel in the acquisition of many rural recreational properties and working ranches throughout Colorado in the 1,000 to 25,000-acre range.
• Structured and implemented limited development projects, including Pine Cliff and Allis Ranch in Douglas County, Colorado; Wahl Coleman Ranch in Park County, Colorado; and Evans Ranch in Clear Creek County, Colorado, one of the nation’s first and leading limited development projects.
• Served as founding counsel for various statewide land trusts and land trust coalitions.
• Principal drafter of the original Colorado Conservation Easement Tax Credit Legislation (2000).
• Participant drafter of every amendment to the Colorado Conservation Easement Tax Credit Legislation (2001–2015).