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Category:Tips and Guidance

A new year offers the promise of a fresh start, new opportunities and new projects. But before your land trust leaps into 2025, take a moment to pause, review and wrap up your year-end. This can set you up for success in the coming year.

Wrap up your monitoring and inspection reports

  • Your stewardship staff or volunteers put in the hard work to monitor your conservation easements and inspect your conservation fee properties – now it's time to check to make sure your records are complete. Accreditation requires monitoring or inspection reports be completed generally within three months of the monitoring or inspection date. Monitoring and inspection reports may be used in legal proceedings, and large gaps between inspection date and when the report was completed could jeopardize whether the record can be submitted as a business record.

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Requirement (see Requirements Manual):

  • Stewardship 1.4

Practice Elements:

Get your completed project records in order

The end of the year at your land trust might have brought a flurry of project closings. Take the time to make sure each completed project has:

  • A baseline documentation report signed by the land trust and the landowner

  • Copies retained (replicas of the signed originals) of critical correspondence, baseline documentation reports, title insurance policies (if any), and unrecorded surveys (if any).

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Requirement (see Requirements Manual):

  • Transactions IV.2

  • Transactions VI.2

Practice Elements

Now is also a good time to take care of some records housekeeping. Check to make sure your original records are secure and protected from damage or loss. If you are using electronic records, ensure that you have a final copy in your files.

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Requirement (see Requirements Manual):

  • Transactions VI. Record Keeping

Practice elements

Alliance Webinars

Review your list of easement violations and conservation property ownership challenges

It can be easy to lose track of violations and ownership challenges during a busy time. Before you get too far into 2025, make sure to review how your land trust tracks and documents violations and ownership challenges – it can be helpful to do so on a regular basis.

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Requirement (see Requirements Manual):

  • Stewardship V.1 and V.2

  • Stewardship VI.1 and VI.2

Practice elements

Have you reported placeholder claims to Terrafirma?

Does this sound familiar? Your stewardship staff discovers a neighbor is encroaching onto an easement property during their annual monitoring rounds. Maybe they notice that the neighbor is storing items on the easement property or throwing leaves/yard debris over the line. Now is the time to make sure you made the vital next step by filing a claim or placeholder claim with Terrafirma (if you are a member of Terrafirma).

Even something small needs to be documented and filed. Waiting to notify Terrafirma means the claim will likely be denied. In order for a claim to be eligible for coverage, it must be filed with Terrafirma within the policy year that you or anyone else at the land trust first became aware of the issue. The policy year is not the same as the calendar year – it runs from March 1 of the start of the policy year to March 1 of the next year, plus a 60 day window for filing claims.