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Perpetual conservation easement programs are designed to provide long-term protection for biologically diverse landscapes. While easements have been successful at preventing the deleterious effects of development and fragmentation, on-going adaptive management of easement protected properties is often necessary to protect underlying ecosystem functions. This research investigated the types of land management private landowners implemented on easement protected properties and the factors that were conducive to increased use of management actions. We report on the results of a survey of 513 landowners in Texas that have a permanent conservation easement on their property. While we predicted that easement satisfaction and good social relationships between landowners and easement holders would result in increased management, we found that landowner motivations for landownership to be stronger drivers of active management actions. We also found significant differences in management actions between landowners with different easement holders, which may be reflective of the mission of the easement holder. The results of this study suggest the need for: increased easement holder capacity to support targeted outreach between easement holders and landowners,  the promotion of landowner participation in peer to peer social capital networks, such as prescribed burn associations and wildlife management associations and easement flexibility mechanisms that allow for adaptive management on easement protected lands.