The University of Maryland has released a report on the “Conservation Land-Use Policy Toolkit”.
This report summarizes land-use policy options, incentives, and planning tools to reduce farmland and forest conversion in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. Policy options discussed include zoning, urban service boundaries, conservation easements, impact fees, transfer of development rights (TDR), and other planning approaches. Lessons learned are based on interviews conducted with local and state planning agency staff from case studies across the six states in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. The target audience is the local governments, nonprofits, and agricultural and environmental stakeholders interested in land-use planning to preserve agricultural and forest lands within the Bay region.
The Chesapeake Bay Trust, with funding from the Chesapeake Bay Program Goal Implementation Teams, sponsored the development of this report. Responsibility for the content of this report is the authors alone
