The Camas Soil Conservation District is located in the south central area of Idaho on a high prairie just fifteen miles wide and thirty miles long at an elevation of just over five thousand feet. While it has an agricultural based economy, the county boasts of an excellent downhill ski area and various winter and summer recreation opportunities.

   The Prairie is watered by many small streams and creeks, most of which drain into Camas Creek which eventually flows into Magic Reservoir which is responsible for irrigating many thousands of acres of cropland. It is the sediment being transported by the streams into Magic Reservoir that is currently the main thrust of the Camas Soil Conservation District activities.

  The history of the Camas Soil Conservation District illustrates how people have a developed a new way of thinking about natural resources since the District was formed in 1957. It is an ironic history because today the Camas SCD's top priority is of correcting a problem it helped create years ago when landowners, with government approval and support, straightened many stretches of streams and removed willows from the streambanks to gain cropland, The resulting erosion changed the course of not just the creeks, but of the Camas Soil Conservation District.