In 2005 the Pennsylvania Environmental Council led the development of a freely accessible set of documents to help private land conservation efforts in Pennsylvania.  These documents contain a series of criteria and action items that land trusts and local governments may use to ensure that their stewardship activities, from before acquisition to long-term monitoring and protection of conserved land, were sufficient.  The program was appropriately named "Sharing Stewardship".

Since that time, the Land Trust Alliance has developed and launched their well-recognized Accreditation Program, which is now considered the national standard for land trust efforts.  PEC strongly encourages land trusts to participate in the Land Trust Alliance Accreditation Program.  However, we have continued to receive requests for the Sharing Stewardship documents, which have been found as useful supplementary materials.  Therefore they are provided below.