[Talk-us] National Forest boundaries

[Bradley White]

> A relation for all would be ok too, as long as the private inholdings are
> not removed from the NF (which I think has been done in some cases).

I've argued for this in the past on this mailing list, but have since
come around to disagreeing with this position over tagging semantics.
Most NF boundaries are now tagged with 'boundary=protected_area', in
which case the boundary should represent physical land that the NF
actually owns and manages, and not the congressionally-declared
boundary. In my area, half of the city of Reno and nearly all of
Truckee fall within an congress-declared/administrative NF boundary -
these areas are certainly not protected.

IMO, a tagging scheme that better represents the meaning of these two
boundaries would be:
1. 'boundary=protected_area' around fee simple NF land ownership,
since this describes the actual protected areas of land
2. 'boundary=administrative' (with a not-yet-existing 'admin_level')
around declared NF boundaries, since this is an administrative
boundary for the NF and doesn't necessarily show what land is actually
managed by the NF.

We should even consider not including congressionally-declared
boundaries, since they aren't even theoretically verifiable on the
ground, and really don't necessarily indicate any kind of protection
of the land within the boundary. Fee simple ownership is at least
usually ground-verifiable with small yellow "NF boundary" placards.