Congresswomen Harriet Hageman and Julie Fedorchak

In April, Congresswomen Harriet Hageman (R-WY) and Julie Fedorchak (R-ND) introduced the Landowner Easement Rights Act (H.R. 2773), a bill that would prohibit the Department of the Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service from entering into new conservation easements exceeding 30 years. It would also make it possible for landowners to renegotiate terms, renew agreements, or buy back conservation easements at fair market value.

The non-profit American Stewards of Liberty (ASL) has done much to help the public and landowners deconstruct the deceptively benign-sounding practice, suggesting that instead of “conservation easements,” more fitting terminology would be “conservation servitude.” In practice, ASL explains, conservation easements “are how non-profit Land Trusts and the government are gaining control of America’s private property.” When landowners place a conservation easement on their land, they convey primary control of the land to a third party forever, while that party, the easement holder, gains “a substantial asset that is recorded on [their] balance sheet.”

Rep. Hageman demonstrated her grasp of land grab and property rights issues in 2024 when the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed a rule to create Natural Asset Companies (NACs) that would have allowed corporations and foreign investors to quantify and monetize “assets” like air and water. Thanks to the efforts of legislators like Hageman, Utah Treasurer Marlo Oaks, ASL, and others, the rule failed to move forward. During the comment period, Hageman encouraged the public “to weigh in on this potentially devastating effort to securitize our national heritage lands and private property rights!”

Rep. Fedorchak, a fourth-generation North Dakotan, is serving her first term in Congress, following 30 years in business and public service, notably in the energy sector. Unfortunately, her concern for landowners’ rights domestically does not appear to extend to Gaza. In a press release about her just-concluded participation in a congressional delegation visit to Israel, she affirms that “America’s security is tied to Israel’s security” (expressing admiration for Israel’s “next-generation” military tech) but says nothing about the Gaza land grab and genocide.

In 2022, U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer, a fellow North Dakotan, and two other senators introduced similar easement-related legislation (S. 3989) that would have limited conservation easements to 50 years. Let’s hope that the ever-more-blatant assaults on property rights underway will spur more legislators into awareness of the land grab and help the 2025 legislation gain traction.