Land Trusts and Conservancies Editing and Proofreading Services

A conservation easement or covenant is a promise made by one landowner that binds every subsequent owner of the land, in perpetuity, enforced by an organisation that must still exist to enforce it. Almost nothing else in civil society attempts this. The documents therefore have to survive the death of everyone who negotiated them, changes in farming practice and climate nobody anticipated, and a future owner who bought the land without reading carefully and is now being told they cannot build.

We edit what land trusts, conservancies and covenant holders produce — conservation easement and covenant documents, baseline documentation reports, landowner-facing explanations of what a covenant means, negotiation correspondence with landowners, stewardship and monitoring reports, annual monitoring letters to owners, violation and enforcement correspondence, amendment and discretionary approval procedures, acquisition and disposal policies, land management plans, public access provisions and visitor information, donor and funder material for land purchase appeals, tax and valuation information for donors, and governance documents including perpetuity and stewardship fund policies. Our editors check that a document written today can be applied by a stranger in fifty years.

The landowner explanation is the document that determines whether a covenant is honoured or fought, and organisations habitually leave it until after the legal drafting. A farmer signing away development rights on land their family has held for generations is making a decision they cannot reverse, frequently for a fraction of the value forgone, and the legal instrument is not a document that explains anything. We write these so what is given up is stated concretely — not "development rights" but no new dwellings, no subdivision, this many farm buildings within this area, these activities requiring written approval — so what is retained is stated with equal clarity, since owners frequently believe they have lost more than they have; so the monitoring visit is described, because an annual inspection is the part owners most resent and least expect; so the amendment process is explained honestly, including that it is deliberately difficult; and so the position of a future buyer is set out, because the family selling in twenty years will otherwise discover the covenant at the worst moment.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including negotiations in progress and information about landowners and sites. We are editors rather than lawyers, valuers or land managers, and we offer no view on any easement, its enforceability, tax treatment or conservation value — those require your own professional advisers. What we can do is make the explanations clear and the stewardship documents durable.