The year 2007 will go down as a banner year for land conservation in Massachusetts, with over 11,000 acres around the state - an area equal to all of Quincy - permanently protected from development before a special federal tax break expired last night.
The secretary of energy and environmental affairs, Ian A. Bowles, had through yesterday signed 266 so-called conservation restrictions covering 11,201.8 acres around the state. More than 5,100 acres, or nearly 8 square miles, were put under protection in the last 18 days alone, officials said.
With conservation restrictions, land owners generally continue to own their land but agree to give up their right to ever develop it. They get both a one-time charitable tax deduction and permanently lowered annual property taxes.
Parcels that have been protected from development include a 28-acre island off Monument Beach in Bourne, nearly 270 acres on Nantucket, 39 acres abutting a pond in Worcester, and land around working farms in Framingham and Southborough.
"It's a testimony to a lot of very hard work by conservation trusts and land trusts around the state," Bowles said. "It added up to more than the last three years combined" and was by far the most land put under conservation restrictions since the state program began in 1967.
Environmental leaders said the driving factor was a tax break Congress and President Bush approved in August 2006 that expired at midnight last night.
The special break let landowners use the value of the conservation restriction they have donated to offset up to 50 percent of their taxable income for 15 years, compared to 30 percent for five years under the prior tax laws.
Some full-time farmers and foresters making conservation restrictions can use the break to offset all their federal tax obligation for 15 years.
The one-time deduction, which some advocates want Congress to make permanent, inspired many people who had been considering a conservation restriction on their land to follow through, environmentalists said.
State law requires that the environmental affairs secretary approve each conservation restriction, to certify that it is ecologically significant land and not just a tax dodge.
Peter J. Howe can be reached at howe@globe.com.
