What motivates landowners to protect their land? Hear what landowners say about why they donated or sold a permanent conservation easement on their land.
"Destruction, in the name of development, is going on so fast everywhere it is hard to know what will happen in the years ahead," wrote Alverta Dillon, a retired schoolteacher in 1990, six years after she and her sister, Louise, placed their 150-acre Garrett County farm in easement. The Dillon sisters, now deceased, permanently preserved their slice of heaven, in the scenic valley known as "the Cove" located in a watershed of the Cove Run, a tributary of the Youghiogheny River. There, they lived in a farmhouse built in 1928, also listed in the Maryland Historical Trust's Historic Sites Survey, where they tended to gardens of flowers, herbs and vegetables. As stewards of the land at the Cove, the Dillon sisters' move preserved the farmstead that had been in their family since 1870. A self described "biologist, ecologist...with a bit of horticulturist thrown in," Alverta was keenly aware of the complex mechanisms of ecological systems. Their easement guarantees perpetual preservation of this simple, honest way of life so important to us all.
MET Easement recorded in 1984. The Dillon sisters generously bequeathed their entire estate to MET upon Alverta's death in 1998. |
