A retired botany professor and science librarian shudders at the thought of cutting down a tree for nothing.

“It’s about the worst thing you can do to a tree,” T.H. Milby said.

His love for trees and nature spurred him to get a Ph.D in botany from OU. He continued to work for the university for 31 years as the science librarian and part-time botany professor.

He has been retired for 18 years, but he continues to operate a tree farm on his personal property. To protect the nature he loves, he decided with his wife to place a conservation easement on the 75 acre property in Noble. Now, the estimated 900 black walnut, oak, chestnut, live oak, maple, sycamore, cedar and a myriad of other trees are protected from future developments.

The easement prevents anyone else from building on the property, Kathleen Milby, T.H. Milby’s wife, said.

”My husband always wanted to preserve the land,” Kathleen Milby said.

Originally, T.H. Milby used his land to plant landscape trees and to farm trees for expensive wood used in furniture. Now that they have placed the easement on the land, T.H. Milby said they will let nature take its course. He won’t be planting or selling anymore trees.

The only work done to the land is an occasional mowing and bailing of the grass, Kathleen Milby said.

While there are benefits to owning land with a conservation easement, such as a tax write off, the Milbys said their goal was to save the land, not profit off of it.

“The easement made the land less valuable because you can’t build on it,” T.H. Milby said. “But, we think it’s more valuable now.”

Lyntha Wesner, Norman Area Land Conservancy chair and member of the Norman City Council Greenbelt Commission, helped the Milbys procure the easement for their land.

Normally, the organization approaches land owners with significant acreage and discusses placing a conservation easement on the land, Wesner said. Typically this costs money for the organization, but the Milbys donated the land, Wesner said.

The organization operates in Norman and the surrounding areas to protect land from over development, Wesner said. Under the Farm and Ranch Lands Protection Program, the organization receives funds helping to purchase easements and protect farms and wildlife, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s website.

“We think in terms of long-term living,” Wesner said. “It’s important to have farmers working closer to where people would eat the food.”

Most conservation easements allow property owners to continue to farm, but each easement may be different, Wesner said. What’s great is the property owners still own the rights to the property, Wesner said.

The Milbys plan to pass down the land to their children when the time is right. But for now, they said they will enjoy the natural wildlife and fishing in their pond.