As Development Revs Up in Southeast, One Anacostia Native Is Protecting Her Family’s Land and the Trees That Make It Home
Rebecca Renard-Wilson is using conservation easement to protect her family’s wooded, quarter-acre lot.
By hola | Published | No Comments
lush quarter-acre lot. (Credit: Darrow Montgomery)
This story is part of Hola Cultura’s investigative series “The Shade Gap.” The series is supported with funds from Spotlight DC with reporting by participants in Hola Cultura’s Storytelling Program for Experiential Learning and co published with the Washington City Paper. The story was written by Marina Caraballo, edited by Christine MacDonald, Hola Cultura’s executive director and editor, and copy edited by SPEL Fellow Kami Waller.
Growing up in Anacostia, Rebecca Renard-Wilson used to love driving the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. As Ward 8’s lush tree canopy came into view through the windshield, she knew she was close to home.
“There’s a point where the parkway is a little higher than the land ahead of it,” she says. “I knew I was home because I saw the trees.”
Now, the house on a quarter-acre wooded lot that Renard-Wilson’s parents bought in 1980 faces intense pressure from developers. “They want to develop every inch,” she says. “But I want to ensure that, even if something happens, this land stays green space forever.”
To protect the family legacy and the trees that she loves, Renard-Wilson recently placed the land under a conservation easement with Casey Trees, a nonprofit dedicated to restoring and protecting the District’s tree canopy through planting and advocacy.
“Casey Trees supported me 5,000 percent through that process,” she adds. “They even submitted a letter to the Zoning Commission about what losing green space would mean for water retention and runoff.”
Conservation easements are legal agreements that permanently restrict development to protect the land’s conservation value. Casey Trees, which now holds the easement on Renard-Wilson’s property, works closely with landowners to ensure green spaces like hers stay protected for good. The easement allows Casey Trees to take over stewardship of the woodland, ensuring it remains in its current state, according to Kelly Collins Choi, the organization’s director of policy and land conservation.
“We’re not going to hit our tree canopy goals by planting trees alone,” says Collins Choi, referring to the District’s plan to extend the shade-giving tree canopy to 40 percent of the city by 2032. The canopy decreased between 2015 and 2020, the most recent estimation from the D.C. government puts the tree coverage at 37 percent of the city. The D.C. Department of Transportation’s Urban Forestry Division is expected to release a new report next year, amid growing concerns that the District’s tree canopy has continued to shrink, raising serious questions about whether the city will meet its 2032 goal.
“We really need to protect our existing tree canopy,” says Collins Choi, adding that the best way is to protect mature trees that already provide a lot of shade, habitat, and stormwater management, rather than planting new trees that will take decades to grow.
Currently, Casey Trees holds about 10 easements across the District, with a special focus on Wards 4, 5, 7, and 8—areas that face the highest need for green space to combat urban heat and flooding, Collins Choi says. Renard-Wilson’s easement is the organization’s first on a residential property; others are on community green spaces, including Crispus Attucks Park.
“When people think of land conservation, they think large tracts of farmland or forest out West,” Collins Choi explains. “We’re trying to take that model and apply it in an urban setting. … Whether it’s an ecologically important area or a pocket park, we ensure that it stays green forever.”
With D.C.’s population increasing, and 18 million square feet of development currently in the District’s construction pipeline, conservation-driven efforts like Renard-Wilson’s are in tension with development.
Conservation easements offer one of the few tools available to ensure some of that land stays protected.
torn down and replaced. (Photo courtesy of Renard-Wilson)
“I get phone calls literally every day saying, ‘Hey, do you want to sell your property?’” Renard-Wilson says. But she has resisted the pressure to sell—just as her grandmother wanted.
She credits her history teachers at Benjamin Banneker High School with helping shape her early understanding of structural racism. Her resolve deepened at Oberlin College, where she majored in African American studies and immersed herself in African American culture and history. Renard-Wilson says reading Natalie Baszile’s “We Are Each Other’s Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers, Land, and Legacy” — a collection of essays, interviews, and poetry highlighting the experiences of Black landowners—opened her eyes to the systemic loss of Black-owned land through exploitative means.
“It just really made an impact on me,” Renard-Wilson says. “There’s so much historical evidence of Black land especially being stolen or being taken away because of, you know, inability to pay back taxes, or because of some kind of legal chicanery.”
Renard-Wilson recalls watching one of her Anacostia neighbors lose his home in a D.C. government tax sale while battling cancer.
“God forbid, if something were to happen where someone were to be able to steal that land, they’re not going to be able to build anything in the back,” she says.
Renard-Wilson now lives in California and flies home a few times a year. Her elderly parents still live in her family home but need help managing the trees. She says they would have had to hire a management company if the land hadn’t gone into conservation. Casey Trees acts as steward for the land, making sure it remains wooded. According to Collins Choi, her organization also assists private landowners with forest management on properties with conservation easements. In Renard-Wilson’s case, Casey Trees will help remove invasive plants and may work on creating a walking trail through the property if grant funding is available.
While conservation easements traditionally have been associated with rural areas and tend to benefit wealthier communities, experts say they are increasingly used to protect urban green space and combat racial disparities in environmental access.
“Low-income communities and communities of color, including Black and Latine neighborhoods, have disproportionately less and worse green and blue infrastructure such as parks, trees, and healthy streams,” says Tony Arnold, professor of law and urban planning at the University of Louisville, where he directs the transdisciplinary Resilience Justice Project.
“Conservation easements can be a useful tool for addressing green and blue infrastructure inequities in urban areas,” he says.
According to the District’s Sustainable DC, Clean Energy DC, and Climate Ready DC combined 2024 progress report, Wards 7 and 8 are the most vulnerable to climate change impacts due to high rates of unemployment, poverty, obesity, adult asthma, and age. These same neighborhoods have some of the lowest levels of green and blue infrastructure in the city, according to an analysis by D.C.’s Equal Rights Center.
In Anacostia, where trees serve as a buffer against sweltering summer heat and worsening stormwater flooding, those inequities are front and center. But while conservation easements can help safeguard these areas, expanding them is not always straightforward.
“The problem is that conservation easements often rely on individual landowners choosing to protect their property,” Arnold says. “That can detract from the government’s responsibility to invest in green infrastructure where it’s most needed.”
When it comes to conservation easements, the conventional wisdom is that they reduce property values by limiting the land’s development potential. Renard-Wilson intends to pass the land on to her children, but she also doubts the easement will impede her family if they decide to sell in the future.
“I would think that someone who bought that land would see it as a piece of property with an amazing forest in the backyard that will always be maintained by people who love it, which makes it so valuable,” she says. “I have, in my mind, people who would be just like me, who would be like, ‘This is a gift.’”
Collins Choi notes that while federal and state tax incentives exist for donating land or conservation easements, the District does not offer income tax credits. But many states, including Virginia and Maryland, provide income tax credits based on the value of the land placed in conservation that can be carried forward for 10 to 15 years. Donors may also qualify for federal deductions that can provide financial relief to landowners who may otherwise lose out on potential income from developing their property, Collins Choi says.
Renard-Wilson believes that the District should take a more active role. “I think the city has become shortsighted,” she says. “There should be all of the incentives for maintaining green space.”
Beyond her own family’s land, Renard-Wilson hopes her decision will inspire other residents in historically Black neighborhoods, such as Anacostia, to explore conservation tools that preserve green space while keeping the land in community hands.
“That neighborhood deserves green space. We deserve trees,” Renard-Wilson says. “My grandmom found her solace in that. This is healing work.”
View all the stories in “The Shade Gap” series.
Recent Stories
