Protecting Live Oak Farm Forever
There is a moment just before dawn on Live Oak Farm when the world holds its breath. A burnt-orange moon hangs low over the tree line. Then, as light breaks across the marsh, hundreds of birds lift all at once — waterfowl, waders, wings beyond counting — rising in a single great wave above the rice fields of Vermillion Parish.
It is the kind of moment that makes a person understand, deep in their bones, why some land must be protected forever.
That is exactly what Charles Payne and the Godchaux family decided to do.
A Family’s Land, A Family’s Legacy
Live Oak Farm has been in Charles Payne’s family for generations. More than 5,000 acres of south Louisiana landscape — working rice fields, coastal marsh, live oak ridges draped in Spanish moss — land that has fed families, sheltered wildlife, and shaped the Payne family’s identity for as long as anyone can remember.
Charles is a rice farmer. He knows this land the way you know something you have worked with your hands — its rhythms, its moods, its capacity to surprise you. He knows where the pelicans gather in winter and where the stilts wade in summer. He knows that this place is irreplaceable.
And he wanted to make sure it stayed that way.
What a Conservation Easement Does — and Why It Matters
To permanently protect Live Oak Farm, Charles and the Godchaux family partnered with Land Trust for Louisiana to place a conservation easement on the property.
A conservation easement is a voluntary legal agreement between a landowner and a land trust. The landowner retains ownership of the land — they can still live on it, farm it, hunt it, and pass it down to their children. What the easement does is permanently restrict certain uses that would harm the land’s conservation values: subdividing it, developing it, converting the wetlands to other uses.
The agreement is recorded in the public record and runs with the land forever. No matter who owns Live Oak Farm in 50 or 150 years, the terms of the easement hold. The rice fields stay rice fields. The marsh stays marsh. The live oaks stay.
Land Trust for Louisiana holds the easement and monitors the property every year to ensure the terms are honored — a commitment we take seriously, in perpetuity.
For Charles, the easement was not a sacrifice. It was a declaration.
Protecting What Has Always Been There
Charles Payne protected Live Oak Farm for three reasons that are, at their core, one reason: love.
Love of his family’s legacy — the generations who worked this land before him, and the generations who will work it after.
Love of the wildlife that depends on it — the migratory birds that pour through the Mississippi Flyway each fall and winter, the wading birds that nest in the marsh, the species that need large, undisturbed tracts of south Louisiana habitat to survive.
And love of the land itself — this particular piece of Louisiana, with its particular light and its particular wildness, that cannot be replicated anywhere else on earth.
Live Oak Farm will continue to be a working rice farm. The family will continue to steward it. And now, through the permanence of a conservation easement, it will remain intact not just for this generation, but for every generation to come.
Louisiana’s Land Needs Champions Like Charles Payne
Louisiana loses land at one of the fastest rates of any state in the nation. Coastal erosion, development pressure, and wetland conversion threaten the landscapes that define us — the places that filter our water, buffer our storms, feed our culture, and make Louisiana unlike anywhere else on earth.
Conservation easements are one of the most powerful tools we have to fight back. They are voluntary. They keep land in private hands. They honor the relationship between landowners and the land they love. And when a landowner like Charles Payne steps forward and says this land matters, and I want to protect it forever — that decision echoes across generations.
We are proud to have worked with Charles and his family on this project. And we are proud to welcome Charles onto the Board of Directors of Land Trust for Louisiana, where his passion for this state’s land, water, and wildlife will help guide our work for years to come.
Do You Know Land That Deserves to Be Protected?
If you are a landowner — or if you know one — who cares about protecting Louisiana’s land, water, and wildlife in perpetuity, we would love to talk. Conservation easements are flexible, voluntary, and tailored to each landowner’s goals. Every piece of land has a story. We are here to help protect it.
Reach out to us at info@landlala.org
Land Trust for Louisiana protects Louisiana’s land, water, and wildlife — for the people and communities who depend on them, now and forever.
