PLAYING WILDLIFE POLITICS: Protecting a Tax Break

Jim Range, the chairman of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP), a coalition of hunting, fishing and conservation groups, hasn't been spending much time outdoors on his Montana ranch lately. Instead he has been in the wilds of Washington, working on what he considers the most important issue facing the environment today--taxes. How's that? "If you look at the arsenal of tools that we have for conservation, especially on private lands, tax incentives are critical," he says. "I don't think the government is going to buy huge chunks of public land anymore." Range notes that almost 34 million acres have been protected by easements in the past 25 years. Landowners got tax breaks by entering into a federal easement program that protects property from development. But some people jacked up the price of their land or made claims on land that had little conservation value. "Congress wants to stop these thieves by lowering the tax incentives," he says. If that were to happen, though, a lot of good habitat could be gone forever, sold to developers. "Getting rid of the loopholes is the answer, not removing conservation tax incentives," he says. An environmental attorney for Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, he helped start the TRCP, named for our first conservation-minded President, in 2002. He met with the current President in December 2003 to help head off an EPA proposal that could have removed protected wetlands from the Clean Water Act. Four days later, President Bush killed the EPA draft plan. With the Senate Finance Committee now ready to consider plans to reduce incentives for easements, Range has some more convincing to do. --By Jay Cassell