Conservation Easement in Works For Fayetteville, NWA Land Trust

The permanent conservation easement for Kessler Mountain in Fayetteville is in the final stages of completion, and city officials expect the easement to be fully executed and in place early next year.

The 409-acre easement, to be held by the Northwest Arkansas Land Trust, stipulates no commercial development, few hard surface trails, no subdividing, only one structure, a viewing pavilion, and protections for microhabitats, one of which has trees believed to be around 300 years old.

Kessler Mountain will also have a habitat management plan and year-round monitoring.

In protecting the mountain, the easement creates a contrast to the surrounding regional park, which will be built out with traditional amenities such as softball diamonds, picnic areas, and soccer fields.

Kessler Mountain, formerly known as Mt. Kessler, is a hodgepodge of properties that amounts to around 642 acres in the southwest corner of town. Once the site of a proposed housing subdivision known as Southpass, the raw land was given a reprieve by the real estate crash, which killed the Southpass project.

Since that time, a mix of donations, outright purchases, and a trade enabled the city to amass the 642 contiguous acres.

The conservation easement, which forbids development, is expected to play into the health of both the Illinois River Watershed and the Beaver Lake Watershed. A qualified third-party oversight group, the land trust is holding the easement because Fayetteville owns the land.

“To own the land that you also hold an easement on is a conflict of interests,” said Terri Lane, the land trust’s executive director. The easement is so stringent that even if the city sold the land, the easement would still remain in effect, Lane said.

Fayetteville also has conservation easements on Mt. Sequoyah Woods, and on Brooks Hummel, two preserves east of College Avenue.