Mapping Fun Agencies Work Together To Create A Map Of All The Recreation Sites In Kootenai County

Casting about for a different place to launch your fishing boat? Looking for a forest trail suitable for your ATV?

You’re in luck. An unusual partnership between Kootenai County and the U.S. Forest Service will result in two new, user-friendly maps that will be available this summer.

“It’s been exiting for us,” said Kurtis Robinson, supervisor of the county parks and waterways department. “It just sort of fell together.”

It all began with Joe Encinas. An information resource manager with the Forest Service, he was assigned to create a new access map for the Coeur d’Alene River Ranger District.

What forest managers had in mind was vastly different from the gray, blue and often difficult-to-decipher maps that they’ve provided in the past. The new version would show not only recreational spots, but what activities could take place there. It would show not only roads and rails, but which are open and which are closed.

Best of all, the map would all be digitized. That means it would be easy to update, and easy to incorporate information from other agencies.

“This is the first of its kind,” said Encinas, who checked out maps created on other forests and found nothing quite like what he was producing.

As part of his task, Encinas went to the Bureau of Land Management, the Coeur d’Alene Tribe and Kootenai County, looking for information about roads that lead into the forest.

“It just so happens that at the time Joe was getting into his mapping project, I was initiating an amendment to the county’s comprehensive plan for recreational sites: parks, waterways and trails,” Robinson said. “The comprehensive plan is really weak in those areas.”

The task included creating a map that would show all recreational sites in the county, regardless of ownership.

Beside being useful for recreationists, such a map would allow the county to make long-range plans and set priorities for recreational sites. Plus, the map would be helpful to include in grant applications when the county goes looking for money to pay for projects.

The county has been giving out the same launch-site map for six years, Robinson said, and has been frustrated at not having anything more up-to-date. Now, thanks to Encinas, it will have a map that includes all different kinds of recreation sites.

It will be a hybrid of the Coeur d’Alene Ranger District access map, with the Shoshone and Benewah county parts deleted.

“We call it the Kootenai County Comprehensive Recreational Map,” Robinson said.

The new Forest Service map is big news for the agency. At a time when there’s hot debate about which users can go where on federal land, the map will make clear which roads are open, and to what kind of transportation: hikers, bicyclists, horseback riders, snowmobilers, two- or four-wheeled ATVs.

“With this map, people will see that there are more trails open for various uses than there are closed,” said Steve Bateman, resource planning assistant with the ranger district. “This helps with enforcement of regulations.”

Encinas has created color-coded icons that show not only what kind of recreational site is there, but which agency manages it. The maps will feature two charts: one listing federal sites, one listing non-federal sites. The maps will be decorated with color photographs and feature an inset map of the popular Canfield Mountain trails.

The access map has other benefits:

The digital information it contains can be shared with mapmakers throughout Idaho, as part of a statewide collaboration to standardize maps.

It will be the basis for a new visitor map for the forest, which will be produced out of the Forest Service’s Salt Lake City office. Visitor maps traditionally have been more detailed than access maps, and only came out every 10 years or more because of the effort to produce them.

If Encinas has his way, the access map eventually will be available on the Idaho Panhandle National Forests Web Site. People then could print out specific sections they want.

“Everybody stands to win with this kind of product,” said the mapmaker.

For Encinas, the real reward for two years of work will come when he can get away from the world of computers and geographic information systems.

“That’s what I look forward to this summer: My wife and I getting out there on the forest and putting the map to use.”

This sidebar appeared with the story: NEW DISTRICT MAP

The new Coeur d’Alene River Ranger District map will cost about $4. It is expected to be on sale at Forest Service offices sometime in June. The free Kootenai County Comprehensive Recreational Map also will be available in June. It will be distributed at such places as marinas, county parks and docks, the Idaho Fish and Game Department, and stores that sell fishing licenses.