Land Protection

The Bristol Bay Heritage Land Trust accepts donations of land or conservation easements, or raises funds to purchase land or conservation easements, from willing private landowners to preserve habitat important for salmon and wildlife in Bristol Bay.

Click here if you own land that you are interested in conserving.

What good does it do to create a federal park and provide 100 percent protection to some fish and game habitat onto which caribou and salmon migrate, if the desecration allowed to occur outside its borders in the same ecosystem is left to the discretion of state or private owners.  – Jay Hammond, “Tales of Alaska’s Bush Rat Governor”

Since statehood and the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in 1971 land ownership in Bristol Bay has become legally fragmented. The Bristol Bay Heritage Land Trust (Land Trust) was formed in part to help prevent this legal fragmentation from resulting in habitat fragmentation. Since incorporation in 2000 the Bristol Bay Heritage Land Trust has helped conserve 79,812 acres, of which we own 400 acres and hold conservation easements on 58,412 acres. The primary tool for this protection is the Conservation Easement. Alaska Law (AS 34.17.060(a)) defines a Conservation Easement as a non-possessory interest held by an organization like the Land Trust that restricts the owner’s future use and development of property consistent with the terms negotiated in the easement to protect the natural values of the land forever.

Federal Tax Incentive for Donations of Conservation Easements by Alaska Native Corporations

As a result of the America Gives More Act passed by Congress and signed by the President in 2015 an Alaska Native corporation can now claim a charitable deduction for the full value of a donated conservation easement up to 100% of the corporation’s annual taxable income. If the corporation did not make enough income in one tax year to offset the value of the conservation easement, it may be able to carry forward the amount of the deduction in excess of its taxable income over the next 15 years.

For detailed information on how to prepare for and use this charitable deduction refer to the following detailed article in the December 2022 edition of the Alaska Law Review, linked here: Protecting Subsistence Lands While Boosting the Bottom Line: The Enhanced Federal Tax Incentive Available to Alaska Native Corporations for Donations of Conservation Easements.

IRS Opinion Letter on conservation easement donations by Alaska Native Corporations

A Conservation Blueprint for Alaska The Nature Conservancy 2006

In 2006 the Nature Conservancy in Alaska published A Conservation Blueprint for Alaska. The Blueprint is designed to provide a tool for public land managers, conservation organizations, private landowners, and others interested in conserving species diversity in Alaska. The Blueprint focuses on whether the terrestrial landscape of Alaska managed for conservation is sufficient to protect the state’s biodiversity. While biodiversity may be sufficiently protected for some landscapes by federal and state conservation units, protection for species in many landscapes remains inadequate. The Blueprint helps identify where protection may be lacking. The Blueprint can be a very useful for documenting the justification for a claim under the rules of the Internal Revenue Code for a conservation easement charitable donation by an Alaska Native Corporation

Executive Summary: https://bristolbaylandtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/Executive-Summary.pdf

Portfolio of Areas of Biological Significance: https://bristolbaylandtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/Portfolio-of-Areas-of-Biological-Significance.pdf

Assessing Protection of Alaska’s Biodiversity: https://bristolbaylandtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/Assessing-Protection-of-Alaskas-Biodiversity.pdf

Map of Biodiversity Significant ANCSA Corporation Lands: https://bristolbaylandtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/AK_NativeCorp_Portfolio_ltr_cropcompress.jpg

Lake Iliama and Pedro Bay Rivers Conservation Project

On May 29, 2021 the shareholders of Pedro Bay Corporation voted by an overwhelming majority of 90% to approve conveying three legally binding conservation easements over 44,147 acres of corporation land to protect forever three river systems that are critical for the spawning and rearing of the Sockeye salmon that return to Lake Iliamna every year. The conservation easements also cover a portion of the proposed northern transportation route to the proposed Pebble Mine. The restrictions on development in the easements prohibit execution of any right-of-way agreements for the mine project. The conservation easement blocks the only access road to the proposed Pebble Mine that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was willing to approve under its Clean Water Act authority to permit the project.

In 2022 the Land Trust successfully raised $20 Million dollars purchase those conservation easements from Pedro Bay Native Corporation.

OVERWHELMING SUPPORT

The national fundraising effort was led by The Conservation Fund and supported by a wide range of foundations, individual donors, corporations, commercial and sport fishing organizations including: Bristol Bay Native Corporation, Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association, The Wyss Foundation, Patagonia’s Holdfast Collective, Alaska Venture Fund, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, The Conservation Fund, Richard King Mellon Foundation, NorthLight Foundation, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation through Walmart’s Acres for America Program, The Bunting Family Foundation Fund B, MeLampy-Lawrence Charitable Trust, Mark Dexter and Deb Cowley, Richard and Martha Wagner, Robert Shaw, OBI Seafoods, Trident Seafoods, Orvis, Wildtype, Trout Unlimited, numerous foundations and hundreds of individual donors, as well as through collaborative fundraising efforts with The Nature Conservancy and World Wildlife Fund, which includes support from the Brotman Family, Susan Burchill and Anne Pattee. See a full list of project donors here.

Sockeye Salmon:  Iliamna Lake and the three watersheds within the conservation easement areas – Knutson Creek, Pile River, and Iliamna River – are major producers of sockeye salmon for the Bristol Bay commercial fishery. The Project area alone generates an average of 4.3 million sockeye salmon annually, contributing upwards of $21.4 million in ex-vessel value to the commercial fishing industry. For less than the average annual ex-vessel value that the conservation easement area produces for the commercial fishing industry, the easements now protect that stream of revenue forever. http://bristolbaylandtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/The-Economic-Value-of-the-Pedro-Bay-Rivers-.pdf

Wood-Tikchik State Park

Alaska’s Wood-Tikchik State Park was established in 1978 to protect the salmon ecosystem of this chain of glacial lakes that flow into Bristol Bay. It is the nation’s largest state park. In 2008 Aleknagik Natives LTD conveyed a 21,000 acre conservation easement to the State of Alaska to protect the Agulowak River migratory corridor and spawning streams on Lakes Aleknagik and Nerka. The Land Trust and The Conservation Fund worked together and with both parties to facilitate the negotiations and the eventual vote by the shareholders of the corporation to sell the easement. The Land Trust has protected and continues to work to protect other private parcel inholdings within the Park.

The Land Trust also helps facilitate negotiations and raise funds to purchase land or conservation easements to be held by other eligible organizations like the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Alaska State Parks or federally recognized local tribal governments. Our primary focus within statutorily created government conservation units is to prevent development on private land inholdings within these protected areas that could undermine the purposes for which the conservation units were created .

Lands We Have Helped Protect

Click on sites highlighted on the following map to see a photo and details about parcels of property we helped protect: