Abstract: As the goals of soil and water conservation shift from single erosion control toward process restoration, systematic governance and multifunctional synergy, conventional practices still show a tendency to emphasize engineering measures and short-term indicators while paying insufficient attention to ecological processes and natural succession. To respond to the transformation needs of soil and water conservation in the new era, this paper adopts an approach combining theoretical review, framework construction and case analysis. By integrating theories and practices related to near-natural forestry, nature-based solutions, ecosystem services and adaptive management, this paper proposes the concept of near-natural soil and water conservation and explains its conceptual connotation, theoretical framework, implementation pathway and typical applications. The study suggests that near-natural soil and water conservation does not exclude necessary engineering measures, but emphasizes respect for landform patterns and hydrological-soil-vegetation processes. Through the ecological, site-specific and coordinated allocation of engineering, biological and tillage measures, it aims to integrate soil erosion control, ecological process restoration and ecosystem service enhancement. This paper further constructs a mechanism framework supported by rewilding, ecological blank space and ecological resilience, proposes a five-step technical pathway consisting of site condition identification and ecological baseline diagnosis, ecological governance unit construction, low-disturbance measure combination, ecological process connectivity construction, and adaptive management and dynamic maintenance, and preliminarily develops a naturalness evaluation framework from five dimensions: ecological baseline, ecological structure, ecological process, intervention mode and management maintenance. The proposed concept and pathway can provide theoretical references for the transformation of soil and water conservation from engineering control to process coordination, and offer methodological support for soil and water conservation and ecological restoration practices in different regions.