Mission and Purpose
What are the Land Trust’s Mission and Goals?
The mission of the Exeter Rural Land Preservation Trust is to preserve and protect the rural character and natural resources of Exeter for the benefit of present and future generations. This includes recreational land, working farmland, sensitive environmental areas, and historic properties that are an important part of our community. To work toward this mission, our goals are:
- Locating areas suitable for both conservation and passive recreational activities
- Preserve working farmland
- Protect sensitive environmental areas from development
- Provide collaborative opportunities with environmental organizations and other groups to foster natural resource awareness and education
Our Purpose
As a land trust, we help owners of properties who want to protect their land from future development, typically through implementing conservation easements. Conservation easements are voluntary legal agreements between a landowner and a land trust that permanently restrict development or certain land uses in order to protect the land’s environmental values.
These values can include wildlife habitat, prime farmland soils, water resources, scenic or culturally important properties, and recreation potential and public access to nature. Each conservation easement is different and is based on the interest of the property owner(s). A conservation easement does not automatically make a property public, but public access can be granted by the property owner if they wish.
Why does Exeter need a Land Trust?
Conservation easements provide property owners with a wide variety of options to continue to enjoy their land while preserving it in a way that makes sense for your vision for future generations. We are interested in working with you to do this. Exeter is fortunate to have a lot of protected natural resources owned or managed through the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (State of Rhode Island), the Audubon Society, and the Nature Conservancy. We want to provide Exeter’s landowners with another option to protect and preserve their land.
