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Geocaching Crackdown?
thejuggler writes "Some cities and counties are banning or considering banning geocaching in their parks. "It's good, clean, wholesome fun - just do it someplace else," said Brian Adams, chief of resource protection for the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway, which has banned geocaching. The geocaching.com website claims there are over 600 caches within 100 miles of the twincities."
Althouh I enjoy 'geocaching', I can see their point. What's to seperate these caches from ordinary litter.
Yep, I never spell check.
More incorrect spellings can be found he
Naturally, the headline is a bit of an exaggeration of the article - only some parks are talking about banning it outright, and they do have a point - some of the material being left is unsuitable, large numbers of people traipsing to the same point causes erosion, etc. But if the caches are moved regularly, and only suitable material is left, then it wouldn't be a problem - except who would regulate it?
Robert Sime, a Richfield dad, takes his 4-year-old daughter out about twice a month. He said parks should adjust to what the public sees as legitimate use. "When volleyball came along, they all put in courts for that," he said.
This is one of the most insightful comments in the whole article. Instead of trying to fight the geocachers they should be helping them to establish the cache sites. The park would be able to create a more terrain friendly cache site, and in turn they would get more visitors.
Isn't this the kind of visitor you'd like in your park?
"Ninety percent of us pick up bottles and cans, whatever we find. It's part of the game," she said.
They allow this guy to speak on behalf of the park administration?
"It's good, clean, wholesome fun -- just do it someplace else."
Translation:
"Good, clean, wholesome fun has no place in our state and national parks."
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Going for a good old fashion bushwalk/hike. All you need is a map and some water etc. No expensive equipment. You don't need a goal to marvel in the beauty of nature. Make that your goal to hike to somewhere new and beautiful like a secluded waterfall where you can go for a swim or a big hill with a view. HOw many of the geocaches actually stop to look at the enviroment they are walking through.
While parks rangers are alwas trying to get people to the parks it ahs to be the right tyoe of people. 50,000 people to a park is good but not if they are the kind that trash the place. Like the 2 guys on jet skis on Sydney harbour who were rounding up the penguins and running over them. THis was after the penguins had returned for the frist time in 50 years or something.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
While allowing horses and stating that "mountain bikes are distructive, cause erosion and take up too much room on the trails."
Parks are for everyone and the park authorities need to learn to adapt and accomodate.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
"They worry that hundreds of people tramping through their woods will damage plants and habitat."
Maybe someone should point out to these people that the idea for a park is _for humans to use it_. Now, it's certainly true that you don't want people to use it in such a way as to cause unnecessary damage, but building a park then worrying that people will go there is moronic, to say the least. It often seems to me that "conservationism" has gone so far that the people in charge are forgetting _why_ they're supposed to be conserving these places.
the geocachers? I would consider them cool if they used map/compass and not a gadget from Fry's. finding section markers in the middle of the mojave desert = fun. with a GPS receiver it's trivial.
Though I see your point and agree to it to some extent, places like the Petrified Forest are a special case. I for one think this "hand's off nature" attitude thats made it's way into popular thinking is foolish. In the long run it's actually self defeating, since insulating the public from experiencing it in a personal way leads to a lack of appreciation for it IMHO.
;-] ). Those memories, along with teaching from my parents to be responsible and not destructive gave me a great love and respect for nature. Things have changed drastically now, and not for the better.
I'm old enough to remember a time when you were allowed off the trails in most parks. I have many fond memories of exploring, discovering and having the thrill of just maybe getting lost in the woods (hey, I was a kid
Now every park is like going to a theme park. Stand in line here. Walk here. You can touch this but not that. God forbid that you TOUCH that tree or plant, you may hurt it! Don't you DARE feed that squirrel or bird, you're disrupting nature!
Uh, pardon me, but 90% of the time this is utter bulls**t. Granted you'll have your small share of idiots ruining things for everyone else, but shutting down access for the common man/woman/child is NOT the way to solve it. Even with limited access the fools still find ways to litter, destroy and generally ruin a beautiful location.
So what is the answer? Well, IMHO the more people are connected to a place the more they will care about it. Give people the education and reason to care and much of the policing will be handled by the public itself.
Case in point: there is still one metro park in my area that allows people to go off trail to a long stretch of river. This is by *far* the most litter-free area of park I've seen. Since the river is wide and shallow you consistently see people fishing, parents with kids walking the shallows looking for crawdads, and people in general just enjoying actually EXPERIENCING nature - not just staring at it from behind a fence or barrier. You also consistently see people walking the bank and riverbed picking up any litter they see, since they know that THEY might be the next one to step on that piece of broken glass or bottle cap. I've even seen a fisherman take some teenage kids to task for throwing their litter on the ground. He talked to them in a friendly way and they actually listened to him and picked up their trash, joking around with him.
I'm not saying just open everything up and let people do whatever they please in our parks, I'm just saying that this "hands off" way of thinking is getting too strong. Nature is not some delicate construct that will fall over and shatter at the least little nudge from big bad mankind. It's been my experience that most people I've spoken to that think this way have an inate dislike of mankind to one degree or another, whether they realize it or not.
1. - We must preserve these lands for future generations (of humans).
2. - Humans aren't allowed in these lands. Humans should stay in concrete boxes, close to the center of urban areas. Any other behavior is sprawl.
by setting up cache sites in high crime areas.
Some places we could start:
Methadone Clinics
Blood & Crips Hangouts
Recent Stabbing/Shooting/Jumper Down/ locations
Train tracks of dimly lit urbab train station.
The obvious solution is to stay home and watch tv, as opposed to doing new things and thinking of new ideas. Alternatively, if you must get out, then go to a mall of corporate megastores. When you go into a park to geocache, you are not doing your part to Consume and watch ads.
The price of freedom is eternal litigation.
People would go to secret locations and leave messages and spy related items, never to return. Their contacts would then come at a totally different time and pick up said items.
Geo Caching would provide far to many 'False Positives' to the Keystone Kops chasing terror suspects.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
In my opinion, all local parks are social parks. I was furious when they banned mountain biking (all parks in Monroe County, NY--near Rochester, NY) but still allowed horses. If erosion was the issue, then it's not a social park, and you should treat it as a nature park and only allow people on foot (or equivalent.)
The root cause is that we need to determine the purpose of our parks. Once the definitions are established, the allowable and not allowable behaviors become clear. The short answer for now is that if there's barbeques or a frisbee golf course, you can geocache; if there's a sign-in sheet and dedicated nature paths, you can't.
--- Jason Olshefsky
Karma: Poser (mostly affected by adding this line long after everyone else did)
All it's going to take is a Geocacher getting a job as a park ranger. Then things may change. Heck why not have park sponsered classes on responsible geocaching (free or minimal charge)? Even park sponsered caches (they can put them where they want and move them when things are getting out of hand). They could even put printouts or cards of trees in the area, a keychain or something in the cache that advertises the park. Park rangers should work with the folks who want to use the park.
Gorkman
I guess I am willing to conclude that if:
Every story on something I KNOW something about gets it wrong
...then it is fair to assume that MOST stories get it wrong MOST of the time. It isn't that I am cynical. I just don't think the media/journalists are in the business of telling the truth. They want to entertain. They want to sell. OK, well, noted. But if you want facts, you are aren't going to get them from a newspaper or channel 9.
(PS: You are in charge of visi.com?! Wow... Personal aside to Saxton(34078)
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
You points are correct, but it will never become that popular. I think its popularity will peak within a year, then taper off. Most poeple who do it were outdoor enthusiasts to begin with, despite the image most non-cachers seem to have of yuppies playing with their toys. While it does get some pasty geeks out of the house for the first time in years, finding Happy Meal toys just isn't enough to motivate most people to go outside if they weren't already going.
I agree that this is nice from the standpoint that it gets people out into parks, etc, etc. But why do people need to have a GPS device and the web to enjoy the outdoors? Why can't people hike, run, ride their bike without having some connection to the internet? I never get the guys in the park with their metal detectors though, so maybe it's just me.
That's the cool thing about Geocaching. Establish a geocache just off the end of the trail. Put a disposable camera in the cache, and put notes in the description on the website asking cachers to bring a small grocery bag, fill it up with litter on the way to the site and take a picture of themselves with their bag of litter when they find the site. (Make it the 'theme' of that site.) You will find that the vast majority will carry out a bag of litter with them.
If the powers that be get angry, you have a camera full of photos of cachers and the litter they carried out.
Tim
Now, on a more serious note, when I explain the geocaching thing to friends or co-workers, if they still look at me funny after I explain the whole GPS and prize-exchange thing, then I just use my standard: "Okay... just think of it as an excuse to go hiking.". Ultimately, I think that that's the end result: marginally more people getting out of their homes and walking around in nice, big public areas and getting some fresh air.
Now, although the rangers and park officials claim that they'd like more people to appreciate the outdoors, I think they'd prefer that they appreciate them from afar. Like just about every other line of work, I'm sure they often mumble amongst themselves: "This job would be great if it weren't for the customers".
Bottom line: If you want more people at the park, then you've got more people at the park. Deal with the increased foot traffic... that's what you're paid to do... to manage the park. However, if you *don't* want more people, then either close the damn park entirely or require permits or something. But don't go preaching about how people should get back to nature if you're not prepared for them to do it during your shift.
I think the geocachers in the state where the article was written need to take a clue from the Maryland Geocaching Society ( http://www.mdgps.net ). This is from their self-description and sounds VERY appropriate:
The Maryland Geocaching Society is an organization for Geocachers run by Geocachers. The group was originally founded in order to preserve Geocaching in our State Parks. At that time Maryland State Parks, in particular the Patapsco State Park was asking for the removal of all caches from the property which they managed. Recognizing this as a very serious issue regarding the sport in the area, a group of avid geocachers gathered to form the Maryland Geocaching Society. The very first order of business was to reach out to park officials in an effort to come to an understanding and save the State Park Geocaches. Through a lot of hard work, patience and cooperation a set of State Park guidelines was finally agreed upon and adopted by Patapsco State Park. This same set of guidelines would later go on to be adopted state wide! If our founding members had not stepped up when they did, there is no telling how many parks we as geocachers would be shut out of.
I think pre-registering geocaches on State Park land is important to the health of the trails and non-trail environments. Getting people outside and bringing attention to our much maligned parks is important and geocaching done on park land is a great way to do both (as any...and many here...of the geocachers know).
By laying out guidelines to protect state lands (many of which mirror guidelines that geocaching.com/GroundSpeak lay out in the first place for caching etiquette), the parks will stay healthy and no worse for the wear and the people will get out to enjoy some of the non-urban delights around them.
This of course does not preclude urban caches which are a lot of fun too (and feel much more like espionage...even given the current temperment of most Americans towards city-lurking).
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
Most parks in our area have either zero or one geocaches in them and probably about 10,000 pieces of actual trash. Put another way, within 100 miles of my home, there are 400 GeoCaches. How many items of trash are there within 100 miles?
So, if I remove ten pieces of trash, then add one geocache, the park is winning overall.
Even if you consider a geocache to be 'trash', it's an utterly negligable increment on the load of trash in most of the parks I've visited.
Then there is the 'cache in - trash out' initiative where geocachers go a-hunting with a large black bin bag and remove LARGE quantities of trash along with visiting the geocache.
Geocaching is at worst benign and at best a glorious way to find great new places to go. It's an ideal use of public land.
www.sjbaker.org
Look at the geocaching site and count the number of visitors per year to each site - tha answer is about a couple of dozen. New sites tend to attract a flurry of interest - which fades to very low levels after a month or so.
Geocaching is a hobby that scales naturally. Most cache SEARCHERS also plant NEW caches. If the number of players doubles, so will the number of caches. So the number of visitors per cache will stay approximately constant. (In fact, it will gradually drop over time as each cacher plants more caches at time goes on - but typically visits fewer and fewer as they seek harder caches - and caches with complicated clues and pre-conditions.)
So - I don't see how we'll ever get to a situation where there are clearly beaten trails to every Geocache.
That's CERTAINLY not the case right now and I have the torn T-shirts and bramble wounds on my legs to prove it!
www.sjbaker.org
Gee, how would you like to have to go all over the place and pick up someone elses crap they leave behind?
Apparently, this is what geocachers do, and yes they like to do it (as when they go on these geocaching expeditions they clean up real litter).
Honestly, no one is stopping you from going on a crusade to hunt down every cache in the world and throw it in the garbage. Or a bonfire, hey.
I think some things you are missing about this hobby are:
1) It promotes parks and excercise therein by making a game out of the experience
2) Yes, one hello kitty lunchbox (or something) gets left in the park, but many pounds of garbage are collected by the cachers who visit the park and taken out as a simple goodwill gesture
3) This is not something that directly affects you. I mean really, who pissed in your cornflakes this morning, anyway? I'm sorry some moderator doesn't know what a troll is and made you out to be one, but does this really bother you so much? Why?
I am a firm believer in the "leave only footprints" ethos myself, but I consider these caches an acceptable compromise just as we accept paved trails and mile markers and posts and chains and crap (I mean, really, we could do without them, but they serve a purpose so we live with the compromise). If you do not, and you see one, then dispose of it properly and feel proud you did something for the park. And like I said, the cachers have gone to the trouble of telling you *exactly where to find them!*
So if you really really want to, you can go get every damned one of them, throw them away, pile them on Microsoft/AOL/Disney's doorstep, mail them to RMS (or the cachers themselves) in protest, whatever you like! What are they gonna do to you? Post on slashdot?!