There are lots of preservation groups, each with its own specific mission and way of approaching it. Some are advocacy groups; some are education organizations; others collect documents or restore old buildings or lobby legislators. 

They may work on the national level, the state level, regional, or local levels. A land trust is a non-governmental public-charity (aka: 501c3 nonprofit) whose primary purpose is to own or manage land in a way that is consistent with its mission. That typically means protecting natural resources. In the case of the Pee Dee Land Trust (PDLT), the mission defines historical, agricultural and natural resources as appropriate for conservation. 

As a public charity, a land trust represents all of us, the taxpayers, and it can accept tax-deductible donations in the form of land for conservation or money to spend on land conservation. The donor gets tax benefits and the public gets the benefits of protected land. Land trusts have been given a toolbox full of options to help land owners who are interested in conservation. Some examples of those include the most obvious: buying land or accepting donations of land. Other tools include providing funds, or helping with negotiations for other groups involved in land protection. A land trust can help find and encourage conservation buyers. It can also acquire (through purchase or donation) specific development rights on a parcel of land, even though it remains in private ownership. This sort of transaction is handled through the legal document known as a conservation easement. 

Conservation easements provide an innovative way for a landowner to voluntarily give up certain land uses that he or she believes are inappropriate for a particular site after identifying what is important to protect on the site.The land owner continues to own the land but chooses not to exercise certain property rights that would destroy a place’s natural beauty, historical significance, habitat or agricultural productivity. The landowner asks a third party, the land trust, to ensure that this agreement is kept over time, even if the land is sold or given away to another individual. 

A conservation easement works in much the way that a powerline easement or sale of timber rights does in that it does not necessarily convey public access, but it does separate various property rights from a piece of property. So, at its core, a land trust is in the land acquisition and management business for the purposes of conservation for public (our) benefit). Because land protection is done strictly on a voluntary basis by the land owner, the land trust’s conservation efforts are non-regulatory.