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04.13.11 — PA Department Conservation and Natural Resources

Pike County Maps Out Adventure for Outdoors Enthusiasts to Follow
It is one thing to be a county blessed with a wealth of natural resources; it is another to actively engage in sharing that unspoiled natural bounty with others. Folks in Pike County have done just that, rolling out a “Welcome Mat” that will be very hard to ignore.

It has been just about two months since “Pike Outdoors: A Public Lands Guide for Sportsmen & Outdoor Enthusiasts” first rolled off the press. Response so far has been overwhelming to the colorful, outdoors-oriented collection of where-to-go, what-to-do information for the angler, hunter and hiker.

“Public response has been excellent,” said Pike County Planner Sally Corrigan who engineered the 19-page publication with former planner Scot Boyce. “We have had all kinds of people requesting it, trout fishermen, spring turkey hunters, even the local hotels are calling and asking for it.”

Already, 4,000 of the 6,500 printed guides have been distributed. Copies can be obtained through the Pocono Mountain Visitors Bureau and Pike County Planning Office, as well as online.

“As a result of this strong reception, we’ve already had offers from other county agencies saying they would help with reprinting costs for the next batch,” Corrigan said.

Supplied with a copy, DCNR Deputy Secretary for Conservation and Technical Services Cindy Dunn told the Pike County Board of Commissioners: “We here at the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources are well-versed on your county’s rich bounty of waterways and wildlife, game lands, state park and forestlands, and federal lands—but so many are not.”

“For the uninitiated, ‘Pike Outdoors,’ with its wealth of detailed maps, striking photographs, business listings and first-person accounts, extends an invitation that’s hard to turn down,” Dunn told Commissioners Chair Richard A. Caridi, and commissioners Harry Forbes and Karl A. Wagner.

“We are proud to see our state park and forestlands highlighted; we are even prouder to help make this guide possible. DCNR may have provided funding through a Pocono Forest and Waters Conservation Landscape mini-grant, but you folks—with your insightful and innovative thinking—made it happen.”

“I was particularly delighted to see a passage devoted to outlining the goals and unique resources found in this conservation landscape. Visitors who hunt and hike in your thousands of acres of unspoiled wilderness, or fish those special remote streams or ponds, now will have a better appreciation of what Pike County offers, and a better understanding of why it must be protected.”

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