Helen Becker said she has always feared someone would take her land and chop down her precious trees.
She remembered a man in a Mercedes-Benz who swerved up her driveway and asked how much she wanted for her family’s house on 3 acres in unincorporated Winfield.
“Do you see a for-sale sign?” Becker, 80, recalled telling him. “I’d give up ice cream before I’d give up my land.”
Helen and Clyde Becker might not always own their land, which borders the West DuPage Woods, but they have ensured that at least 2.6 acres of it will never be developed.
They have entered into a legal agreement with the Forest Preserve District of DuPage that designates the land as a conservation easement. Their contract is an example of a method to preserve the environment that has become increasingly popular since state law began providing property owners with tax incentives about five years ago.
“It takes a very special type of person to do this,” said Brook McDonald, executive director of the Conservation Foundation, a non-profit land trust association in Naperville. “Basically, they’re giving up the right to develop the property not only for themselves but for their heirs.”
Under the agreement, the Beckers own the land, which they bought 31 years ago for $30,000. They have agreed to maintain the property but are prohibited from subdividing the land, building on it and storing trash or vehicles on it, among other restrictions. They must ask the Forest Preserve District’s permission to chop down trees, dead or alive.
They can sell the land, but the restrictions on the property will carry over to the new owner. The Beckers, in essence, have donated their right to develop the land to a not-for-profit agency, which agrees to never exercise that option.
In return, the Beckers will receive a federal income tax writeoff for value lost on the land. They will receive a 75 percent reduction in the assessed valuation of the land, which will result in lower property taxes.
But the money means little to them, Helen Becker said. They have spent $1,300 on lawyers’ fees to complete the deal, she said, and were happy to do it.
“The real value is in looking out the window,” she said.
With the help of their son, Michael Becker, 45, they have spent 10 years restoring the land with native plants and vegetation, a process that could take another 20 years to complete.
Without the conservation easement, “If someone else had control of the property, they probably would have turned it back into turf grass,” said Michael Becker, who restores the prairie landscape in his job at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia.
Three-foot-high purple coneflower, black-eyed Susan, goldenrod, wild rye, bottlebrush buckeye and bell flowers are among the 40 restored species waving amid mature oak and hickory trees surrounding the family’s home. Tiger swallowtail butterflies are attracted to the flowers, and a family of raccoons often shares dinner with the Becker dog in the back yard.
Two designated gardens contain native plants that Clyde Becker, 78, uses to harvest seeds, which he plants or trades with Fermilab.
Becker, wearing a straw hat with a solar-powered fan that cools his forehead, spends much of his time searching for undesirable invasive species such as buckthorn and garlic mustard that choke out the native plants.
“I can spot them when they’re this high,” he said, holding his thumb and pointer finger a few inches apart.
While more people are creating such conservation easements, few have restored the land as the Beckers have, said Jo Ellen Siddens, ecology team leader for the Forest Preserve District.
“They’re in the forefront of a whole wave of people beginning to do these kind of things adjacent to forest preserves,” she said.
Across DuPage County, 26 conservation easements encompassing 413 acres have been established through the Forest Preserve District. Others have been created through the Conservation Foundation and a Chicago-based organization called CorLands. Each agreement has been tailored to the specific needs of the environment and the property owner.
To qualify for tax relief, the land must meet criteria set by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, McDonald said.
“We’re working with about a half-dozen private property owners right now,” he said.
Two of the largest conservation easements in DuPage County are 141 acres containing the Seven Bridges Golf Course in Woodridge and 183 acres containing the Old Wayne Golf Course in West Chicago.
“It was a compromise,” said Marcia Thomas of the Forest Preserve District’s land acquisitions department. “They basically came about because the Forest Preserve District was interested in acquiring those properties.”
Instead, the private owners agreed to sign contracts to preserve the land as open space and golf courses, and prohibit further development, she said.
CorLands has established 25 conservation easements within the six-county Chicago area, five of which contain 75 acres in DuPage, an official said.
“The whole concept of conservation easements is relatively new to the Midwest,” McDonald said. “They’ve been doing this in the East for 20 to 30 years. Right now, conservation easements are also very popular out West on big ranches. (Media mogul) Ted Turner just placed a conservation easement. They don’t want to see the land ever developed, and they get financial relief.”
