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Consistent compliance monitoring serves a critical role not only in protecting society’s interests by tracking easement violations but also in providing an opportunity for resource stewardship and observation beyond compliance. TNC’s recent standardization of their monitoring report and the creation of a Web page for monitors in California are positive developments for organizing and streamlining compliance monitoring. We found a high level of variability in rangeland easement terms and monitoring approaches even within 1 organization. Residual dry matter guidelines in annual grasslands and oak woodlands were the most common rangeland measure in the grazing easements we surveyed. RDM can provide important information to the ranch manager but is not an indicator for all resource goals. If RDM is desired as a metric for range management, additional efforts should be made to standardize RDM monitoring protocols and the way RDM is incorporated into easement terms. One central challenge for natural resource management on private land with conservation easements is to create terms clear enough to prevent resource degradation over the long term but fl exible enough to allow for adaptive resource management with changing conditions and rancher needs. We found opportunities for easement fl exibility through a variety of mechanisms. Where measuring resource change is important to knowing whether the easement is achieving its objectives, there is a need for additional funding for quantitative resource monitoring at multiple scales. In our future work with a variety of easement holders, we expect to fi nd even greater variability in monitoring approaches and rangeland easement terms from organizations with different missions, funding availability, scientifi c capacity, and local contexts working with landowners with diverse and varying objectives for management and reasons for having an easement.