Land & Water Protection

The Conservation Trust for North Carolina protects land and water resources through direct protection efforts with willing landowners and assistance to the state’s network of 23 local and regional land trusts. The Conservation Trust’s dual approach as a land trust and a land trust service center allows the organization to act in a variety of capacities to ensure highly threatened natural areas in the state are protected.

We focus our direct land protection efforts on the mountain streams, forests, and scenic views of the Blue Ridge Parkway. We facilitate statewide land protection programs and regional land protection projects across the state and, when invited by other land trusts, partner on direct land protection work elsewhere in the state. The Conservation Trust also partners with local land trusts when land trusts need an easement partner to serve as a co-holder of such agreements or hold a land protection agreement on property they own to strengthen their commitment to a protected property.

The Conservation Trust also provides services to the land trusts such as policy advocacy, public relations, training, and facilitation of government programs that provide funding to local and regional land trusts so they can increase the pace of land and water protection in their communities.

Together, the Conservation Trust and the state's network of 23 local and regional land trusts, have protected over 184,000 acres in 998 places.