Wildlife Management Valuations
Wildlife management valuations can expand your land management options, while ensuring that your tax bill reflects the production value of your land, not the market value. This is a useful tool for farmers and ranchers who want to change their focus from production agriculture to wildlife enterprises and for new landowners who want to maintain an ag valuation without running a traditional production ag operation. An ag valuation, also known as a 1-d-1 land use appraisal, is actually a a “Taxation of Certain Open Space Land,” authorized by Texas Constitution Article VIII, Section 1-d-1 and further described in Sections 23.51 through 23.59 of the code. Essentially, this law says that wildlife management can be considered an agricultural use that qualifies the land for agricultural appraisal.
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For land to qualify, it must have met the requirements for agricultural or timber land in at least five of the preceding seven years. By definition, wildlife management must incorporate atleast three of the following practices to manage for a sustainable breeding, migrating, or wintering population of indigenous wildlife for human use including food, medicine, or recreation. The practices include: 1) habitat control; 2) erosion control; 3) predator control; 4) providing supplemental water supplies; 5) providing supplemental food supplies; 6) providing shelters; and 7) conducting census counts to determine population.
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