As the grantor of the land under the conservation easement, the landowner is responsible to manage the land in a way that maintains the condition of the land as it was at the time of the baseline assessment. The cost of managing and maintaining the land is born by the landowner, the organization to whom the CE was granted (i.e., grantee) often has access to funding to contribute to these costs. In addition, grantee organizations usually provide landowners access to other funding sources (e.g., for water source management, fencing, native re-seeding or restoration) to help offset land management costs for the CE.
Ongoing stewardship of a Conservation Easement has associated costs for the grantee organization as well, ranging from wages for staff members to conduct monitoring, collaboration with landowners on management activities, responding to infractions or dealing with legal challenges.
Environmental funding in Saskatchewan, like most jurisdictions, is project based, meaning there are fewer opportunities for simple organizational funding of the sort that would support already-secured land conservation projects. For this reason, organizations contemplating holding conservation easements for a perpetual time period should have a clear plan for how they will cover those ongoing costs.
There are a few approaches to raising funds for stewardship:
-requesting a stewardship endowment from the landowner at the time of the conservation easement grant;
-establishing an endowment for each (or all) properties, adding to it regularly and structuring it to grow;
hiring and using dedicated fundraising staff; and/or
-dedicating a portion of project funds from philanthropic or government granting sources to such a purpose.
