How much effort should a county (or a city) spend to inventory lands to determine which are already permanently protected-and which are the most desirable for protection?
A county (or a city) needs to inventory its private, unprotected lands in order to determine where its best protection opportunities are, but this does not require deed research. The state will provide the number of acres of federal and state-owned greenspace in the county. The county should inventory lands it owns which are already protected greenspace or which could be given permanent protection. But rather than search all the deed records for easements between private individuals and land trusts, a county could simply contact the locally active land trusts and ask for documentation of any easements held. This acreage is likely to be small for most counties.
