Wild Mind

Standard 11: Conservation Easement Stewardship

The land trust has a program of responsible stewardship for its easements.

A land trust that accepts and holds conservation easements commits itself to their annual stewardship in perpetuity, to enforcement of their terms, and to building positive landowner and community relationships to support the land trust’s conservation programs and enforcement actions. A land trust that fails to do so may eventually lose its credibility, could cause its easement program to be invalidated, may erode public confidence in easements, and ultimately risk the protection of the land. Not all land trusts have the capacity to hold easements in perpetuity and may achieve their conservation goals through partnerships with other organizations, fee ownership or other conservation methods. These practices will help ensure that the conservation values protected by conservation easements are sustained over time. – From Background to the 2004 revisions of Land Trust Standards and Practices

Conservation Easement Stewardship is part of the Land Trust Alliance’s Standards and Practices Curriculum, and is designed to provide you with guidance and tools to implement Practices 11B, 11C and 11D.

This course will:

• Help you understand the practices

• Provide you with tools to implement the practices in your organization

• Inspire organizational change

• Help you save more land for the long term

For Accessing the Key Document:

Member of LTA: Download PDF, Non-member: Purchase PDF

Learning Objectives

After studying this chapter, you should be able to:

• Explain the importance of identifying the philosophy or guiding principles that will govern your conservation   easement stewardship program
• Describe how this philosophy will be demonstrated in matters relating to the conservation easement stewardship program and by the land trust as a whole
• Explain why understanding a land trust’s capacity is important in establishing a conservation easement stewardship program
• Describe the importance of having policies and procedures in place to ensure the integrity of the easement stewardship program

Summary

A conservation easement (also referred to as a conservation restriction) can be an effective legal tool in protecting significant natural resources for the benefit of present and future generations. However, a conservation easement does not in itself protect land but, rather, it authorizes the land trust, in partnership with the landowner, to ensure the long-term protection of the property. Therefore, the ultimate protection of the land lies with the ability of the land trust to do its job as steward of the land and to do it well.

Conservation easements are for public benefit, so it is paramount that the public has confidence in the land trust’s ability to fulfill its long-term easement stewardship responsibilities. How a land trust administers its conservation easement stewardship

program will have a direct effect not only on easement landowner relations, but also on community relations. Given the nature of our culture and the easement tool itself, the credibility of a land trust as an easement holder and the integrity of conservation easements as a land protection tool will always face scrutiny. If a land trust takes its stewardship role seriously, it should be able to demonstrate clearly how it fulfills its role and operates with transparency.

It is prudent for land trusts to identify the principles that will guide their easement stewardship decisions and give careful consideration to how those principles are implemented in all aspects of their conservation work. Land trusts also need to weigh their easement stewardship approach against their capacity, and they must be willing to evaluate and adjust their program periodically. Routine conservation easement monitoring, management and landowner relations cost money; however, defending easements against legal challenges costs even more. Land trusts need to plan for the costs of monitoring and enforcement to ensure the integrity of their easement stewardship program is not compromised.

Capacity: The ability to perform all the actions required to manage conservation easements by having adequate human and financial resources and organizational systems in place.

Evaluate Your Practices

Conduct a quick evaluation of your organization’s conservation easement stewardship philosophy and capacity, giving your organization one point for every "yes" answer. Scores are shown at the end of this evaluation and guidance on the importance of the issues raised in the questions follows.
Does your organization:

1. Have a statement about its conservation easement stewardship philosophy or guiding principle(s)?
2. Convey its stewardship philosophy and policies and/or practices to its easement landowners and the public?
3. Understand the relationship between the terms and conditions of the conservation easement and perpetual easement stewardship obligations?
4. Have a dedicated easement stewardship fund or strategy to secure such funding for every easement it holds?
5. Have written easement stewardship policies and procedures for land trust representatives and easement landowners?

The evaluations contained in this book are for training purposes only. They are not designed or intended to determine if your land trust is ready for accreditation.
Completing a course does not necessarily demonstrate that an organization is actually carrying out the practice. Therefore, the Land Trust Accreditation Commission will examine documents and information in project files to verify that each indicator practice is being carried out in the land trust applying for accreditation. For specific guidance on how to interpret Practices 11B and 11C for land trust accreditation, see the guidance document posted on www.landtrustaccreditaton.org. This course and others in the curriculum are designed to help your land trust understand how to implement the practices.

Please note:

• The curriculum is not required for accreditation

• Completing the curriculum will not guarantee accreditation