Model Policies

Conservation easements are intended to last—to ensure protection of important resources, no matter people’s whims—through the decades and centuries. However, the world changes and so do understandings of how best to meet conservation objectives. A land trust must be prepared to address these changes in order to ensure that its conservation work is effective while assuring its supporters and the public that it is a reliable agent of conservation. This resource serves as a guide to responsible decision-making regarding potential amendments of grants of conservation easement. WeConservePA guide. 20 pages.

This model policy guides a conservation easement holder's processing of a landowner's request for the holder to: (1) approve an action subject to the holder's review; (2) waive the holder's right to enforce one or more restrictive covenants in a temporary accommodation to the owner; or (3) interpret the terms of the grant of easement as applied to a particular situation. The file also includes a template for communicating the holder's decisions. WeConservePA's guide Acting on Owner Requests for Review, Waiver, and Interpretation Regarding Conservation Easements provides additional direction on this subject.

Every easement-holding land trust should have a policy to help guide responsible consideration of potential amendments to grants of conservation easement. WeConservePA produced this one-page Model Policy for Conservation Easement Amendment, together with its expansive “Guidelines for Conservation Easement Amendments, Waivers, and Letters of Interpretation,” to assist land trusts in establishing or updating such a policy and, most importantly, acting responsibly and productively in their easement decision-making.

The Sample Stewardship Funding Plan is a tool to help conservation easement holders place greater attention on the challenge of securing sufficient funding commitments to meet their easement stewardship obligations and improve their practices to meet the challenge. The sample also serves as an example of a plan that could meet the stewardship funding plan requirement for a WeConservePA Project Planning Grant. 2 pages.