Stewardship is a necessary component of effective long-term land management.
If you are going to be in the business of protecting land, you must develop an active and effective long-term stewardship program. If you do not take the time to organize good records that are both easy to find and easy to decipher, the next steward's job will become very difficult and could jeopardize the reasons for which the parcel was protected in the first place. If you really want to protect land, make sure you have a clear stewardship plan and the financial resources to back it up at the time of acquisition. Baseline documentation is one of the most important steps in getting your record-keeping off to a good start. Also keep consistent documentation of your annual monitoring visits, any enforcement activities needed, and any other decisions that have been made related to the parcel.