The Internal Revenue Service has a long history of pursuing law-abiding taxpayers in an effort to wring every penny from your wallet. A string of recent IRS actions, however, have harmed environmental conservation in addition to putting taxpayers through a great deal of needless pain.

In the 1970s and 1980s, a series of actions by Congress formalized the federal tax deduction for conservation easements — private land tracts set aside for environmental conservation. This and other programs have been extraordinarily successful, resulting in an eight-fold increase in acreage conserved in the last 30 years. The amount of land under environmental protection via private initiatives like easements is now more than 55 million acres — an area roughly the size of Minnesota.