Conservation Easements: Structuring Effective Documents and Enforcing Terms and Conditions
Due Diligence and Development Rights, Challenges in Amending and Enforcing Easements
Course Details
- smart_display Format
Live Online with Live Q&A
- signal_cellular_alt Difficulty Level
Intermediate
- work Practice Area
Environmental
- event Date
Tuesday, September 30, 2025
- schedule Time
1:00 p.m. ET./10:00 a.m. PT
- timer Program Length
90 minutes
-
This 90-minute webinar is eligible in most states for 1.5 CLE credits.
-
This CLE course will examine conservation easements and legal considerations for their drafting and enforcement. The panel will discuss the benefits and limitations of these easements and the challenges associated with amending and enforcing them. Finally, the panel will offer best practices for using conservation easements.
As part of the Conservation Law Program, Mr. Gutschenritter provides legal services to Wisconsin land trusts. He convenes a Land Conservation Law Council of experienced attorneys to help shape and guide the Land, and works to broaden the community of practice of legal professionals in the land trust community, with a focus on the long-term obligations facing land trusts. Mr. Gutschenritter also delivers continuing legal education opportunities to land trust staff and board members across the state.
Mr. Hollinger joined the WeConservePA team as the organization’s first-ever Director of Conservation Law. A member of the Pennsylvania Bar, he has represented nonprofits in millions of dollars of complex real estate transactions, and advised nonprofit clients in a wide range of transactional and operational matters. Mr. Hollinger most recently served as a staff attorney with Regional Housing Legal Services. He received his Juris Doctor, summa cum laude, from Drexel University’s Thomas R. Kline School of Law.
A conservation easement is a real property interest conveyed by a landowner to either a government agency or a qualified land protection organization for conservation of the land and its natural resources. The easement’s granting document empowers its holder to block development, uses, and activities that could harm the conservation values defined in the grant, while keeping the land in the owner’s ownership and control.
The holder of a conservation easement accepts a perpetual and costly obligation to enforce its restrictions. By conveying a conservation easement, landowners permanently limit their use and development rights. Accordingly, counsel to both landowners and easement holders must understand the legal nature of conservation easements, and how they are drafted, administered, and enforced.
Donations of conservation easements and funds to support their stewardship may be beneficial from a tax standpoint for the donors, but counsel must meet applicable legal requirements and ensure compliance with applicable income, estate, and property tax regulations.
Further, because easement holders are responsible for enforcing the easement in perpetuity, they must remain legally and financially prepared to address violations by the landowner and potentially third parties, including trespass or encroachment claims; improper exploitation of natural resources; or claims under the varying state criminal, tort and real property laws.
Listen as our authoritative panel discusses both the challenges associated with drafting effective conservation easements and the considerations for enforcing the provisions of a conservation easement in perpetuity.
I. Drafting and interpreting conservation easements
II. Benefits and limitations of conservation easements
III. Challenges in enforcing easements in perpetuity
IV. Issues associated with the amendment of conservation easements
V. Encroachment and other legal rights to action
The panel will review these and other key issues:
- How should counsel draft and structure conservation easements to maximize public benefits, simplify easement administration, and avoid unnecessary conflict?
- What are the challenges and state law implications of enforcing easements in perpetuity?
- How can counsel advise clients on the requisite stewardship funding arrangements and effective stewardship practices?
