OUR GEM: Kootenai Shoshone Soil and Water Conservation District

The Kootenai Shoshone Soil & Water Conservation District is one of 50 conservation districts in Idaho. We service the Kootenai and Shoshone County areas. The conservation district is made up of seven voluntary board members and one paid district administrator.   

We help farmers, ranchers, private landowners, or community partners with soil and water conservation concerns. The KSSWCD is a public service that is a subdivision of the state, and we work directly with the Idaho Soil & Water Conservation Commission and the Natural Resources Conservation Service locally to provide technical, financial and educational assistance. 

The KSSWCD regularly partners with local and state partners to provide funding for conservation projects. Our goal is to take available technical, financial, and educational resources, whatever their source, and focus or coordinate them so they meet the needs of the local landowner and land user for conservation of soil, water and other related resources.  

One of the annual projects that we administer is the Annual Tree Seedling sale through the Panhandle Seedling Program. We have joined together with three of our sister districts located in North Idaho that include, Benewah, Bonner and Boundary counties. The PSP board is composed of professional foresters with extensive knowledge of commercial and small landowner timber needs. The PSP was created to provide high-quality native seedlings to private landowners in our community to meet their goals for forest management health in realistic quantities at affordable prices.   

The KSSWCD operates four watercraft inspection stations throughout Northern Idaho through a grant from Idaho State Department of Agriculture. Each station is staffed with inspectors trained to detect invasive species such as quagga or zebra mussels as well as invasive weeds. These stations are strategically placed at entry points throughout the state.

Idaho’s $3.7 billion tourism industry relies heavily on our world-renowned fisheries due to the pristine waterways throughout the state. Hand in hand with our fisheries are the multiple forms of water recreation including swimming, boating and fishing. All of these would be vastly changed by the introduction of Quagga or Zebra mussels which not only wipe out the native ecosystem of our waterways but leave behind razor-sharp shells and clog boat intakes and engines. Watercraft that are inspected include boats, kayaks, jet skis and paddle boats. In 2023, the end-of-the-year statistics look like this: 38,305 watercraft were inspected over four stations, with 156 watercraft hot washed and 329 watercraft from infested waters.    

The KSSWCD announced in July 2024 the arrival of the long-awaited no-till drill. We are so excited to offer this resource to landowners in Kootenai, Shoshone, Benewah, Bonner and Boundary counties. The district was awarded a 319 BMP Grant through Idaho Department of Environmental Quality. The district purchased an ESCH 5612 12-foot drill that is ready and available for landowner rental. There are numerous benefits to using the no-till drill such as: reducing or eliminating the need to till, reducing or eliminating the wear and tear on equipment, planting crops earlier due to fewer ground preparation requirements, add grazing value by using cover crops as a feed source, reducing disturbance in soil, ensuring that organic matter remains in the soil that improves plant health and increases water retention and best of all the no-till drill saves around $100.00 per acre for each crop planted. The district has training videos as well as one-on-one troubleshooting with a board member with tons of experience with a no-till drill.  

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Karla Freeman is the district administrator for the Kootenai Shoshone Soil & Water Conservation District.

The Our Gem Coeur d’Alene Lake Collaborative is a team of committed and passionate professionals working to preserve lake health and protect water quality by promoting community awareness of local water resources through education, outreach, and stewardship. Our Gem includes local experts from the University of Idaho — Idaho Water Resources Research Institute, Coeur d’Alene Tribe, Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, the Basin Environmental Improvement Project Commission, Coeur d’Alene Regional Chamber of Commerce and Kootenai Environmental Alliance.