Six years ago, a woman who owns 18 acres southeast of Cottage Grove called me as president of LandWatch Lane County, a nonprofit land use watchdog, to ask if there was anything our group could do to protect her land from the degradation wrought by her neighbor, Weyerhaeuser Timber Company, or from another owner of her property after she dies.

I told her that we had no control over timber practices on commercial forest lands, but she might consider protecting her holdings with a conservation easement overseen by Northwest Land Conservation Trust (NWLCT), on whose board I serve.

An easement now conserves the natural features on the property she owns: the white oaks in her hillside meadow, the maples and alders, the ash and cedars, the willow and nine bark and thimbleberry along the creek t

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