Property access items

This is the strongest category a land trust has and the one with the most permissions attached, because much of the land is not the trust's to open.

Three kinds of land, three different answers

Preserves the trust owns. Access is the trust's decision, subject to its own management plan and any restrictions attached to how the property was acquired — grant-funded acquisitions frequently carry conditions.

Easement properties. Somebody else's land. Public access is frequently not part of the easement and is sometimes explicitly excluded. Read the document, then ask the owner regardless — the easement's silence is not permission.

Land the trust manages for others. The owner decides, and the management agreement may say what is permitted.

Items that work

• A guided walk on a preserve normally closed, with the ecologist who knows it
• A dawn or dusk visit, when the land is at its best and the public is never there
• A place on a species survey, a bird banding session, a plant inventory
• A night camping on a preserve, where the management plan allows
• A guided paddle on a protected stretch of water
• A tour of a working conservation farm or forest with the owner
• A monitoring visit ride-along, which is genuinely interesting and shows what stewardship is

The monitoring ride-along is the item to build. It costs a staff morning that was happening anyway, it is the best possible explanation of the stewardship endowment, and the person who does it becomes a donor to it.

Scope it properly

• Named property, or named type of property where the owner prefers not to be public
• Group size, agreed with whoever manages the land
• Date window, with seasonal limits stated — nesting, hunting season, mud season
• Terrain and difficulty honestly described, because this is rural land
• What happens if conditions make it impossible, agreed in advance
• Whether photographs may be taken and published

The ecological question comes before the fundraising one

Some places should not have visitors. Nesting sites, sensitive habitat, fragile soils, populations of rare species — the ecologist decides, not the auction committee, and a trust that sells a walk into a place it protects has done something worse than not raising the money.

Trespass follows publicity

The practical caution. Publishing a property's location, even for a legitimate auction item, tells people where it is — and some of them will go without asking.

Where an owner has agreed to one guided visit, they have not agreed to a stream of hikers. Keep locations general in public material and give the winner the details privately.

Cap the number

Agree with staff and landowners how many access items exist before the auction opens, and treat it as a ceiling. These cost staff time and landowner goodwill, and the second is not replaceable.

General information, not legal or tax advice for your trust. Easement donation, appraisal and substantiation rules are technical and consequential — your own counsel and the landowner's advisers decide how any of this applies.