Slashdot Mirror
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."
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?
Have you even ever read the rules, or gone a cache for that matter? Caches do *not* get buried, just covered in leaves or sticks or stones - usually in ammo boxes or tupperware, something insanely difficult for wildlife to open if it found it. But then again, since the rules state no leaving food, wildlife is never a problem.
I have only been on 5 caches so far, but we have *never* left a trace that we were there, save for a prize exchage and a entry in the log book.
Your argument is insulting and just plain ignorant
I have geocached for a while now. It seems like it has changed though, and is attracting a much wider following. When I moved to the Charleston area two years ago, there were about 20 caches nearby. Now we have 243. With some many more people involved, it can create a lot of traffic. The best places for caches are off the beaten path where they are unlikely to be disturbed by people who may have ill-intentions. This is precisely where the traffic hurts the most. I haven't read the article yet, still can't get it to load, but as someone who loves spending times outdoors, I'm not sure where I stand on this. It's a fun hobby, but with too many people not being cautious about thier impact on the surroundings, it could be not that great for the park or area the cache is in.
-Michael
Doesn't this have to do with *saving* the parks? If someone slashdots a park (say, trampling nature areas), wouldn't it be nice to have a cache?
This is a great idea, most people have become so hard-wired to their televisions, their computers, and their video games, that we as a human race are beginning to forget the natural beauty in the world. We are shown on television that big buildings, 8 lane highways, and sprawling suburbs are things of marvel or beauty, just watch the discovery cluster if you dont believe me. Many times we hear about park representatives trying to get people into their parks so they dont lose funding or become development areas. Now they are becoming upset that people are visiting their parks? make up your mind!
just my several cents
The cities should just list all their public litter bins as geocaches. That way, the geocachers can have their fun, there is nothing left lying around spoiling beauty spots, and if they're lucky, they won't have to empty their bins so often.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
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.
This isn't the first time someone's complained about geocaching in public-owned lands. Ideally, geocaching wouldn't produce any problems -- you locate the stash, extract it, exchange one item for your own, and re-stash it -- except that the fun of geocaching comes when you have to hunt a bit. That sometimes means digging up the ground, climbing (and re-climbing) trees, or otherwise moving or stressing things that shouldn't be constantly moved or stressed.
The Petrified Forest National Park in the U.S. doesn't allow visitors to pick up bits of petrified wood off the ground, asking them to buy it from the gift shop instead, because it would eventually lead to the removal of all the small samples that make the place what it is. Imagine geocachers roaming and digging all around that place.
Sometimes, preserving natural beauty means inconveniencing the same visitors who've come to see it. I don't consider this unreasonable, since there's still thousands of acres of land, public and unowned, that geocachers can still use. They may not be as scenic to get to, that's all.
As it is i see this as a short lived sport. Right now, it's at the fun stage, where people enjoy it, trust it, and relatively few people are doing it.
What happens though, when it's wildly popular? We'll have some incident where that lunchbox cache is booby trapped, and some kid gets hurt. Then, the news will jump all over it as some dangerous unregulated, unapproved event on public property. And of course, you'll have to think of the children. Blah.
I'd like to try it, if i had the $, and the caches in the area, but alas, i don't.
Perhaps if they try to move it to areas in the country, along rivers, or along regular hiking and biking trails? You could label each cache on the net as a drive, walking, or bike riding cache. These are just some of my own suggestions. I declare them open source and free, do what you will with them. Good luck to them, if this turns out to be a niche, even better. :P
There's a type of cache that's becoming very popular, called a "virtual cache." Nothing is stored on the site, it's just a coordinate, and a clue as to what you're supposed to find there. I'd like to see them ban that. What are they going to do, ban GPS units?
There have been a few cases of serious damage caused by cachers. In one instance, a cache was placed within 10 feet of a teepee ring, which is considered a sensitive archaeological site. If you've seen how the ground gets trampled around a cache, you'd see how this could be a problem. I can certainly understand the park officers being upset that someone posted a "please trample the grass" sign on such a site.
I do think it's a BIT hypocritical though; the public parks are always aching to increase flow through the park to keep their budgets, but apparently they just want people to come in the gate, get the headcount, eat a picnic out of their trunk and leave. When those people start exploring, they get upset.
OTOH, I have seen geocachers that have no interest in exploring. They beeline straight to the coordinates, tramping anything in the way, do their logging, and tromp straight out. But many of us spend an afternoon checking out the trails while we're there, which is exactly why the parks are (supposed to be) there.
Maybe the former types of cachers should take up benchmark hunting instead.
Someone said the site was /.ed... Not for me, so here's the artcle:
MINNESOTA: GPS treasure hunt under fire
BY BOB SHAW
Pioneer Press
Ian Stevens checks his GPS unit, as rain drips off the end of his ponytail.
The GPS arrow points to the east, and Stevens begins another session of geocaching -- a sport like a high-tech scavenger hunt -- in Cottage Grove's Ravine Park.
Three park officials walk up. Will they kick him out?
Not today. The developing friction between geocachers and park officials doesn't materialize.
"Did I hear you say you were geocaching? You are the first one I have seen here," said parks manager Mike Polehna, who seems intrigued. "There's no problem as long as you aren't disturbing the natural areas of the park."
But officials in other parks, faced with an onslaught of geocachers, are scrambling to develop restrictions. Recently, St. Croix National Scenic Waterway in Wisconsin announced a ban on geocaching, and other parks are considering lesser restrictions.
Whatever they decide, they have no choice but to deal with it. Geocaching didn't exist a few years ago, but now, according to the official geocaching Web site, there are more than 600 caches within 100 miles of the Twin Cities.
The sport depends on two new technologies: the Internet and handheld GPS units, which use satellite signals to show the user the precise longitude and latitude of their location.
The geocachers search for a nearby cache on the Web site, record the longitude and latitude of their prize, and then use GPS locators to get within a few yards of the caches. Usually, the caches are in plain sight or under twigs or leaves -- never buried in dirt.
Caches contain such things as trinkets, souvenirs or coins. Searchers are free to take or leave what they like. They then sign into the logbooks.
At home, they record their work on the Web site. Online conversations develop between finders and placers of geocaches.
But it's not for everyone.
"My husband thinks it's the most moronic sport ever," said Nola Cutts, co-chairwoman of the state Geocaching Association, who goes geocaching with her children twice a week. "But he's into fly fishing, so I guess we all have our own moronic sports."
The group was started, she said, "to educate parks departments about what geocaching is and to show them we are not evil people tearing up the parks.
"Ninety percent of us pick up bottles and cans, whatever we find. It's part of the game," she said.
Cutts, 43, of Anoka, takes several of her five children when she goes geocaching. "It gets the kids outdoors, away from TV," said Cutts. "We see wildlife. We talk."
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.
The sport even attracts geo-tourists. Jonathan Gorton, a 43-year-old Milwaukee man who says he has a condition like muscular dystrophy, visits the Twin Cities "because we have pretty much picked Milwaukee clean. We found 428 caches."
That kind of fanaticism bothers some park officials, who say geocaching leads to geotrashing.
They don't want anything left behind in parks.
They worry that hundreds of people tramping through their woods will damage plants and habitat.
"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.
Earlier this year, he and park officials were startled to learn of several geocache sites in their park. On one site, said Adams, balloons were left. "That's not a good thing. Waterfowl and birds eat brightly colored things," said Adams.
In Minnesota, other park officials don't express such vocal opposition.
"It gets people outdoors, which is kind of neat," s
Congratulations! Now we are the Evil Empire
Man I wish I had the points to mod you up. Does anyone read Geocaching.com? These parks folks do have a point about paths being worn to the caches. Moving them once a year would probably help prevent this. Also, putting them near a path or almost on a path would be good too. Also, photo caches are nice too (just take a pic of yourself and of the GPS at the cache.....) and up load it to the web. Geocaching reminds me a bit of ham radio. Everyone searching for a contact(the cache). Sometimes they are hard to find (rare DX). Sometimes not (chatting on a repeater...). If there are ANY Geocacher's that leave trash and mess up the area, I would be surprised. Geocaching has a ethos like camping. Campers regularly leave their stuff on the table and stuff at the site and almost noone steals there stuff (in 20+ years of camping, I have never had anything stolen in a campground). Campers also usually leave the area as good as or better then it was when they got there. Now same as with Camping, there are BAD apples. Just deal with it and let us use the park. Noone else does!
Gorkman
My dad and I both enjoy geocaching. In an effort to increase its popularity in our area, we have placed caches in local parks and other scenic places. One of our ideas was a multicache of all the Civil War forts in our county (there are 6). Two of them are on National Park land. We requested permission to place caches there, and after not hearing anything back for about a month, we placed the caches in inconspicuous areas in the parks. For a few months, we read logs of people who were really enjoying the caches and most of them remarked on how they never even knew about the sites before geocaching. Then things turned sour.
We started reading logs of people being harassed by park rangers. Some reported the park rangers about to arrest the geocachers for stepping off the path. We soon received an e-mail from a NPS official telling us that we were breaking the law by leaving the caches in the park. In the e-mail he specifically mentioned that geocachers dig up earth to find caches (all the caches were above ground) and that they tear up property and litter. None of these statements are true. We had to sneak in to get the caches back without getting arrested ourselves (apparently the park rangers were on the lookout for us).
How do you fight such ignorance? We sent back logs of people saying how much they enjoyed the areas and never knew of their existance before the caches were placed along with letters explaining the 'cache in, trash out' policy of geocaching, but to no avail. Any ideas where to go from here?
The article is heavily drama. I am a geocacher that knows two of the people mentioned in the article. When they say "Three park officials walk up. Will they kick him out? Not today," they're referring to Washington County Park Officials that not only allow geocaching, but promote it as well. Drama, Drama, Drama...
;-)
p ?t=219
p ?t=108
t ails.aspx? ID=44584
t .asp?A=11 922
Nola Cutts, mentioned in the article, said this:
"LOL -- You know what? I talked for the better part of an hour with this reporter about my philosophy of "leave no trace" and my "trash out" activities and the progress MnGCA [Minnesota Geocaching Association] was making with having people pick up garbage on the trails and how I thought geocaching was environmentally friendly in that regard..... You have all heard this from me before
Toward the end of the interview we were JOKING about how my husband hates to geocache and how I hate to fly fish. So what quote does he use, my speech about recycling or fly fishing? AAAAKKKKK!"
They chose to make an almost faticious battle between the parks and the unknown techno-nature-hippies instead of talking about how interesting Geocaching is, and not only that, but most Geocachers that I know of in the Twin Cities, and I know that most with the Minnesota Geocaching Association also help clean up city, county and state parks during caching trips. I'm dissapointed the article was even made, and even more so that it's on Slashdot!!!
The reporter failed to mention that the MN DNR is working on a plan for Geocaching in State Parks as well.
On a final note, that is my visi.com they found mentioned in the 2nd to last paragraph.
Reference URLs:
Thread about article with the MN Geocaching Association:
http://mngca.org/forum/viewtopic.ph
Thread about relations with MN DNR with the MN Geocaching Association:
http://mngca.org/forum/viewtopic.ph
Cache that was visited in the article:
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_de
Ian Stevens' Geocaching Profile (King Boreas) - the main cacher in the article - also an interesting note that he has *placed* more caches than any other cacher:
http://www.geocaching.com/profile/defaul
-s4xton
My name is Aaron Landry, and I approve this message.
There is a saying with geocachers called "Cache In - Trash Out". Basically, it means that whenever you go geocaching, you're supposed to leave the park better than when you came (ie. picking up trash). There is even a day for this.
I know some parks in my area that have become usuable because of this. This guy needs to get a clue and figure out that geocaching is not ruining parks.
What's to seperate these caches from ordinary litter.
Why not come up with park approved geocache containers that are standardized and therefor obviosly not litter?
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
Obviously spoken by someone who has no f'in idea what he's talking about.
Geocaches are not buried, just placed and usually covered with a few sticks. Properly placed, they are difficult to see unless you are looking straight at them, and even then they blend in. Most people use ammo boxes, or tupperware painted black or brown.
The rules state that the landscape is NOT to be disturbed, including when hunting, as much as possible. No food of any kind is to be in the cache, to avoid animals getting into them. Also, the "Cache in, trash out" campaign urges cachers to bring a bag and carry out trash that you see. My kids and I typically carry out one or two grocery bags of trash every trip. I've never seen ANY evidence that cachers have left any garbage; most of the stuff we find is the sort of thing that partying kids would dump.
That's what my last adventure was - finding the site of a WWII B25 bomber crash in the blue ridge mountains. I have hiked up that mountain many times, and /never/ realized that a debris field with airplane parts, rusty engines, prop hubs, etc were just a few hundred yards off the 'official' trail untill a geocacher pointed it out. They just don't tell you these things at the ranger station!
That was a rough hike.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Didn't you guys see his name? It is obvious why he is against geocaching. As a child he left the city to escape the constant taunts and comparisons to the other Brian Adams. However someone found out his dark secret and left a copy of the Robin Hood movie soundtrack in the geocache inside of his park ranger office. Needless to say he was traumatized by the event.
I've never seen a single cache that could be mistaken for litter. An ammo box or well sealed tupperware container painted black, hand lettered with "Dave's XYZ cache #5 - geocaching.com", with the standard notice placed inside explaining to an accidental discoverer what geocaching is, and giving a name and phone number for authorities to call if the cache is in any way in violation of rules so that the placer can reclaim and remove the cache, placed 20 feet off the trail, in the crotch of a tree and covered with sticks, is not what litter typically looks like.
I've not seen any evidence that any cacher has littered. Most times you can tell the cachers on the trails because they have a bag full of litter that they have PICKED UP and are carrying out of the park. My kids and I pull out more trash every time we visit a cache than any 50 careless people are likely to leave behind.
I'm not going to get too deep into this whole thing but I suspect if someone were to find an ammo box concealed under leaves or stone in a public park around here it wouldn't be long before the bomb squad boys were called in.
Yeah, it sounds like fun, but after terror attacks and sniper whackos, people are kindof twitchy around here.
Once a path is there, what's the point of a GPS? You follow the path right to the cache. [...] Perhaps people can show some sportsman ship and pick random places to start their trek to the cache.
What's with the GPS devices? How hard is it to input some coordinates and go where the arrow points? Can't people show some sportsmanship and use a good oldfashioned map?
I'm somewhat serious here; it's all about how hard you want it to be. Some people might enjoy just walking along paths with GPS, some may want to go where no man has gone before with only a map.
Just in case someone is going to do the old "I remember when we didn't have any maps, and it was uphill both ways, in the snow, against the wind"; it's really not that hard to use a map and you really should know how to use one when your GPS fails. Any normal 12 year old should be able to learn how to navigate using only a map, I know I did at that age.
This post is free (as in cheese in a mousetrap).
This means that if enough people goto this same cache, a path will be worn in the woods
On that train of thought, I would suppose the real problem would eventually be the SUV owners with built in GPS systems wearing tire tracks to the cache spot and inadvertantly running over hikers along the way.
Then again, at least they would be using the SUV as an off-road vehicle for once.
he was an ex geocacher, back in the summer of 69.
groan.. OMG
Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com) Addicted is me
That's OK then.
Because as we know, all ammo caches are clearly marked "Ammo" on all sides, and nobody would ever think to hide a bomb in an ammo container with the word "geocache" written all over it!
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
I've found about 45 geocaches so far. It's been my experience that most caches seem to have a "shelf life" of about a year-2 years. After that, they can be lost, be stolen, or all of the geocachers in the area have already found it and it falls into disuse. Caches in our area (the northeastern US) typically follow a trail and then are hidden somehwhere 100-500 feet off the trail. Since it's rare that cachers will leave the trail at the same spot to search for the cache, I've never seen a cache where heavy traffic has created its own trail to the cache, except in the snow, and even then most cachers I know will deliberately create extra footprints to mislead later cachers from the path to the cache.
:-(.
Generally, cachers are a benevolent bunch of people, and I would think that anything that gives the parks and byways extra foot traffic is a good thing.
However, along the lines of this story, the group that maintains the Beaver Brook Reservation in Hollis, NH asked the local geocachers to remove all caches from the reservation. Thisi s in a place that is a haven for dirt and mountain bikers who take a much heavier tool on the trails than geocachers ever could! One of their arguments was that the caches are hidden in the woods off trail, so the cachers go tromping though the woods and disturb the local flora and fauna in search of the cache, whereas the bikers stay on the trails.
This never seemed to be a problem in the days of letterboxing. I guess geocaching has become a victim of its own success
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
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.
I work on an air force base. One day a few months ago, I heard that traffic was backed up going out of one of the gates that is near a freeway overpass.
Someone had reported that a person had left a suspicious package near the overpass.
They closed the gate, called out the bomb squad, cavalry, etc., only to find that the suspicious package was a geocache.
So be careful where you place your geocache, consider who might be watching and what conclusions they might jump to.
I've now been geocaching for over two years. In that time, I've learned more about the environment and *done* more about the environment than I had done in the previous 24 years of my life. Geocaching is directly responsible for that.
Thanks to what I've learned geocaching, when I go on hikes with friends, I'm the person imploring them to stay on the trails (*especially* if the trail is wet and muddy, since walking around the puddle will only make it wider). I've taught several people that bringing a canvas sack and trash bag along on a hike makes picking up litter a breeze.
One example: I was out in the Henderson Swamp area of the Atchafalaya basin area of Louisiana last weekend. While out there, I picked up approximately 13 pieces of floating litter (depends on what you count... I counted the two plastic wrappers individually). Why did I spend my valuable personal watercraft time and gas on cleaning up a couple miles of litter along I-10 over the swamp? Because I learned to do it from CITO (Cache In, Trash Out) and geocaching. Geocaching has made me a more nature-conscious person... it'd be a shame to ban it more. (Note: In places like, say, Yellowstone near Old Faithful, I would be the first person to vote for a geocaching ban, but in, say, Baton Rouge parks... that'd be counter-productive.)
Incidentally, I learned nature from geocaching, and I learned software rights from Linux. I've spent most of my free time for the last half-year developing an application for geocaching... alas, there are not enough Linux-loving application programmers who are also geocachers, and so a native Linux port isn't forthcoming, unfortunately... maybe one day...
Software Developer "This would be a great job if it wasn't for the user"
Park Ranger "This would be a great job if it wasn't for the visitors"
Software Developer "Look at all those bugs"
Park Ranger "Look at all those bugs"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Just a few years ago there was a big complaint from the National Park Service that no one ever visited the parks. No people are going and they are complaining that people are going, walking and seeing the parks? Something doesn't set right with me.
I am a geocacher and I have never seen a cache cause damage to a location.
Two years from now, if they get the regulations, they will again be complaining that no one visits the parks again.
Just thought I'd pass on some personal experience. I started geocaching more than a year ago and let me tell you, this is a great deal of fun. I've done more hiking in the last year than I've ever done in my life. Being a software engineer, I desperately need some solid exercise and gyms are a complete waste of money, IMHO. Having a goal (finding the cache) is much more enjoyable than taking a walk. Having done close to fifty caches, I can say that none of these affects the environment. In fact, Geocaching promotes taking a trash bag with you to pick up the litter left by the rest of the fair-weather hikers. Who raised these littering boneheads is beyond me. Geocaching is not allowed in the National Park system which I find ridiculous. A recent experience at the Grand Canyon affirmed my opinion that evironmentalists are hypocrits and elitists. I attended a nighttime slide show entitled "The sounds of the canyon". The ranger made it very clear that the park service doesn't like the helicopters flying around even though they have a strict flight path. They also make it very clear that it's illegal to ignore anyone in trouble. The next morning, I rose at oh-dark-hundred to go to Yaki Point to take sunrise pictures. Having driven out to the site, I discovered that the National Park service in it's infinite wisdom closed the access road to vehicular traffic. I parked at a picnic area and started to hike in with all my camera gear. Twice a shuttle bus blew past me even though I tried to flag them down. When I finally made it out to the point, I spent about an hour taking pictures. The only sound I could hear was the sound of those damn shuttle busses. IMHO, The National Park Service has become extremist in it's view of visitors. If you're not a serious outdoorsman, we don't want you past the visitor center. This is evidenced by Denali's one access road into the park on which you're only allowed to travel if you take the scheduled bus trip or if you've got a backcountry permit.
There was a parks meeting here in Loveland to disuss this subject. Many Geocachers showed up and had a say in it. In the end they banned all Geocaches in the parks including Virtual Caches. A virtual caches is when you give coordinates to a point of interest ie: Nice statue, big tree, spectacular view. But nothing is actually left that was not there before. They decided this was bad. Never mind it infringes on free speech. Banned! Next. It was really amazing and wrong.