National Association Conservation Districts (NACD) is the nonprofit organization that represents the nation’s 3,000 conservation districts and 17,000 men and women who serve on their governing boards.

NACD’s mission is to enable conservation districts to pool their resources to accomplish collectively what would be difficult or impossible to accomplish individually.

The association was founded on the philosophy that conservation decisions should be made at the local level with technical and funding assistance from federal, state and local governments and the private sector.

As the national voice for all conservation districts, NACD supports voluntary, incentive-driven natural resource conservation programs that benefit all citizens.

The group works directly with more than 2.3 million cooperating land managers and local communities nationwide touching more than 1.6 billion acres of private land.

This work supports the adoption of conservation practices in order to improve the soil, air, water quality, and providing habitat for animals. NACD’s top priority is to encourage landowners to adopt conservation practices that provide countless public benefits of clean air and water, healthy soils and wildlife habitat. Technical assistance delivery is the most critical element to conservation program participation and conservation practice adoption.

To accomplish this, conservation districts work closely with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) in a partnership effort to provide the technical assistance for the various conservation programs that land managers can utilize to address a multitude of natural resource issues on their land.

So this technical assistance provided by NRCS, districts, and other state conservation agencies is paramount to the success of conservation in the United States. Quality technical assistance makes the conservation delivery system efficient and effective.