It’s a good question many landowners ask. It is the amount that the land trust expects the landowner to donate to the land trust to cover the land trust’s costs of providing stewardship to the easement. In accepting a conservation easement, the land trust assumes a perpetual responsibility to monitor and enforce the terms of the easement’s restrictions. On an annual basis the land trust should visit the property to monitor whether the terms of the agreement are being observed. If not, the land trust has the responsibility of seeing that the landowner remedies any violations, or if the landowner refuses, to bring an action in district court to enforce the terms. These monitoring and enforcement activities are annual stewardship liabilities that the land trust must meet. Generally the stewardship endowments from all easements are pooled in a separate trust account that pays for the annual stewardship costs of the land trust. A good land trust will have a sizable, dedicated stewardship account.
The stewardship endowment is an estimate of the amount necessary to generate an annual return that would meet the land trust’s stewardship costs. Some land trusts have formulas for determining the size of the endowment, others have rules of thumb and still others negotiate the amount. Typical amounts range from a onetime payment of $4,000 to $8,000. Most land trusts expect the endowment to be donated at the time that the easement is granted, although some permit landowners to pay over a period of years. It is best to talk to the land trust up front to determine the size and timing of the endowment payment. |
