Geocaching Crackdown? 464
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."
likeness to litter (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:likeness to litter (Score:3, Informative)
Re:likeness to litter (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not come up with park approved geocache containers that are standardized and therefor obviosly not litter?
Re:likeness to litter (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Please Remove Article (Score:2, Interesting)
Good behavior and respect is like common sense. It's rare among the general populace. I would want the practice of this activity be limited to those that are
Re:likeness to litter (Score:5, Informative)
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
Re:likeness to litter (Score:5, Insightful)
Visual Orienteering.NET (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Visual Orienteering.NET (Score:2)
Re:likeness to litter (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:likeness to litter (Score:2)
Re:likeness to litter (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it sounds like fun, but after terror attacks and sniper whackos, people are kindof twitchy around here.
Re:likeness to litter (Score:2, Informative)
Re:likeness to litter (Score:5, Funny)
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!
replying to your .sig... (Score:2)
However, you now owe me one meme:)
Re:likeness to litter (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:So, what else is litter? (Score:3, Insightful)
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 g
They do have a point, I suppose (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They do have a point, I suppose (Score:4, Funny)
Aye carumba!
The parks certainly have a point, but I suspect eduction of your average geocacher would be much more useful. I mean, there's no agency regulating what people can leave behind when they go on a hiking trip, is there? It's common sense and common courtesy more than anything else.
I suspect that geocaching.com might do a better job of educating people as to what's appropriate for a cache (ie, balloons = bad for the most part).
Re:They do have a point, I suppose (Score:4, Insightful)
Technically, I think there is. Most parks have fines for littering, and under the letter of the law geocaching is nothing more than intentional littering (leaving non-natural items). It's not a problem now because it's so new and caches are supposed to be hard to find, which means the average tourist won't be bothered by them. It still is, however, another form of littering.
Don't get me wrong, I'm dying to buy a hand held GPS and try this out, there are two sites within 5 miles of my house that I want to explore, but I can certainly understand the parks' attitudes.
--trb
Moving caches? (Score:2)
It sounds like a nice idea to move caches, but...what about the GPS coordinates? They would be different. What about the coordinates of the cache on the web? So, maybe tell the "installer" of the cache to move it annually, but you really can't regulate that either. I can't hit the website right now but from the three caches I've created I do not remember a change or delete option...it's been a year though, it may just be my short circuiting melon.
Re:Moving caches? (Score:2)
there is even a "roaming" cache type where one person who finds it moves it to a new location and posts the new coordinates.
Geocaching is a too dangerous in the city (Score:2, Funny)
While the dweebish geocachers might think it's all good clean fun, a way to show off their disposable income with a high tech gewgaw and exchange some swag for other swag, terrorists are finding web pages full of GPS coordinates in the midst of populated cities.
Do we really want to see a poor man's cruise missile strike Central Park, loaded with Anthrax or Sarin? How m
Uhh (Score:3, Funny)
Later on..
"We like geocachers, we really do. We just wish they'd all goto Hell and die."
Geocaching is Fun! (Score:5, Interesting)
-Michael
Re:Geocaching is Fun! (Score:3, Informative)
Map and compass (Score:2)
Phight for your right to have Phun! (Score:3, Interesting)
I live in the Santa Cruz, California area and there's quite a large number of caches around her
geocaching? (Score:5, Funny)
This is a great idea. (Score:4, Interesting)
just my several cents
Obvious solution (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Obvious solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Obvious solution (Score:3, Funny)
Hmm.. this sounds like distributed.net's concept of a landfill. 8-)
it's not my kind of hobby, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:it's not my kind of hobby, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:it's not my kind of hobby, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
The park ranger can know the locations of the approved cache sites and visitors need not know about them. Just a posted sign saying to contact the ranger before leaving or moving an existing cache. That way the ranger knows the exact location of each cache and everyone's happy.
Either do that, or paint big black blotches on the park maps stating "spoiler alert".
What about virtual caching? (Score:3, Interesting)
Many times you are not searching for an object left by someone else, but you are looking for a static object, such as a tombstone.
As long as you are looking for a virtual cache, are you okay?
Re:What about virtual caching? (Score:5, Interesting)
That was a rough hike.
What about the trails? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What about the trails? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:What about the trails? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What about the trails? (Score:3, Interesting)
I have done some geocaching, and it was not challenging enough. In orienteering, you have only a map and compass (in a serious competition, having a GPS is grounds for disqualification), and have to run around in the woods and find 6-10 flags. Attached to the flags are punches that you use to punch a card (proof that you were there).
People who are serious about orienteering actually run. But being a typical slashdotter, I can't
Re:What about the trails? (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Re:What about the trails? (Score:2)
Re:What about the trails? (Score:3, Insightful)
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 p
A reasonable reaction (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:A reasonable reaction (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:A reasonable reaction (Score:5, Informative)
This statement makes me doubt the sincerity of the rest of your arguments about loving nature and respecting the wilderness and wildlife.
I have been to many national and state parks and feeding animals is universally a bad thing. The main reason is because the more you feed animals the less dependent they become on their abilities to forage and search for food, and hence can starve during the winter months.
Regarding birds and metro parks, did you ever notice that groups of birds congregate around park benches when you eat? This is a direct consequence to them getting fed by others and hoping to get fed again.
Another and more important reason, though, is that once you feed wildlife, the animals learn that those curious humanoid bipeds will tend to give them food. They start approaching humans more often to get food. And sometimes becoming agressive.
This is particularly destructive with predatory animals like bears. In some forests around here in the Northeast, for some unknown reason people feed the bears. Said bears then approach other people, sometimes agressively. What the original feeders don't know is that the park rangers must destroy bears that do this. So, if you feed bears or other agressive animals, you are actually contributing to their destruction.
This isn't just with bears, it's a common case with deer too. Have you ever seen a deer painted bright orange? This means the deer has agressively approached people before trying to get food. It's painted orange because if it happens again then the rangers have to destroy the deer.
So that's why it's important not to feed the wildlife, because you really are changing their feeding behavior. And since you were unaware of this it makes me doubt the sincerity of the rest of your comment.
Re:A reasonable reaction (Score:3, Insightful)
Th
Please clarify park versus preserve (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Short-lived (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:Short-lived (Score:2, Informative)
Letterboxing North America [letterboxing.org]
Letterboxing UK [fsworld.co.uk]
Some booby traps already (Score:3, Funny)
It's your hell. You go there. I'm going to have an ice cream.
Yay.
What a tool (Score:4, Insightful)
"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."
Re:What a tool (Score:2)
Contact: Brian Adams @ 715-483-3284 x 629 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Contact: Brian Adams @ 715-483-3284 x 629 (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Contact: Brian Adams @ 715-483-3284 x 629 (Score:4, Funny)
groan.. OMG
Let's see them ban virtual caching (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [geocaching.com] instead.
The article (Score:5, Informative)
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
Whats wrong with..... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Whats wrong with..... (Score:2)
These are the same sorts of idiots that ban bikes (Score:4, Insightful)
Parks are for everyone and the park authorities need to learn to adapt and accomodate.
Re:These are the same sorts of idiots that ban bik (Score:2)
I'm sure there must be more like this?
Re:These are the same sorts of idiots that ban bik (Score:2)
My (former) nearby state park had one. There used to be a wooden water tower in Heckscher State Park [state.ny.us], in East Islip, NY. After a new steel one was erected to replace it, the wooden one was left to decay. It eventually fell over, dumping thousands of gallons of water into the woods, washing away a lot of ground in the process. The roots from the trees in the area held on to enough soil to create a nice bike track (or so the legend has it).
It's about 200 yards away from
Re:These are the same sorts of idiots that ban bik (Score:2)
fighting ignorance (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Re:fighting ignorance (Score:3, Insightful)
Drama, Drama, Drama (Score:5, Interesting)
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
I decided long ago... (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
Treasure hunt, not scavenger hunt (Score:3, Informative)
Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunt, not a high-tech scavenger hunt. In a scavenger hunt, you know what you're looking for, but you don't know where it is; in a treasure hunt, you know where it is, but you don't know what it is.
Cache In - Trash Out (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Cache In - Trash Out (Score:2)
BRIAN ADAMS ??? (Score:5, Funny)
Is the Indian gonna cry again? (Score:2)
Use a modest sized green rubbermaid container for your cache. It's waterproof and it doesn't stand out in the scenery. Makes for a challenging find.
Use common sense. If you want to plant a cache, don't put it near another one. Check the list first.
Bizarre (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
What I've never understood... (Score:2)
Let's fix everything, let's ban people (Score:3, Interesting)
Better block it all off/make it illegal so that people will just stay home.
I never understand the mentality of these folks. First, we don't get enough money because no one visits, then too many people are coming/going to the same place.
It's like the age old ban kids from downtown because they use skateboards. Ban kids from 'cruising', ban people from the park. You keep banning people from doing things you're just going to turn them into criminals for doing something that doesn't harm anyone
Geocaching? (Score:3, Funny)
The dichotomy of conservation (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:The dichotomy of conservation (Score:3, Insightful)
2. - Humans aren't allowed in these lands.
Your two assumptions generally are not held simultaneously by the same person, in my experience.
Usually, if someone holds (1) with the "(of humans)" restriction, they only want to regulate the usage of managed lands, not disallow usage alltogether.
If someone holds (2) in the form you presented, they drop the "(of humans)" restriction off of (1).
This resolves the dichotomy.
How small must these geocaches be? (Score:2)
Make it more interesting... (Score:2, Insightful)
Some places we could start:
Methadone Clinics
Blood & Crips Hangouts
Recent Stabbing/Shooting/Jumper Down/ locations
Train tracks of dimly lit urbab train station.
Grounds = Yet Another Phoney Terrorism Alert (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
There's a reasonable way (Score:3, Interesting)
Explanation: WFT is geocaching? (Score:2)
The linked site is slashdotted so no help there...
Geocaching incident (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [planetnet.org] was a geocache.
So be careful where you place your geocache, consider who might be watching and what conclusions they might jump to.
My perspective as a geocacher... (Score:4, Interesting)
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...
Park Ranger and Software developers (Score:5, Funny)
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"
Not all caches are in parks (Score:4, Interesting)
Tim
Next,,,"No one goes to national parks" (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Absurdities of geocaching... (Score:4, Informative)
Firstly, I'm an irregularly active cacher (78 finds or so at last count). I find the hobby to be a lot of fun, and good exercise. It gets me motivated to go to parks I might overlook and to hike deeper into them than I normally would. I've also attended numerous local caching events, and met a lot of nice people.
In all the 78 caches that I've found, I've never seen any sign that the placement of this cache was even visible, much less causing any damage to the surrounding environment with a single exception. I once found the contents of a cache scattered all over the side of a hill. Why? Because somebody had not read the rules, and had left cookies in the cache. Oh well. What did I do? I carefully gathered every scrap of stuff and repackaged it all. Problem solved.
Caching is an environmentally friendly activity. It gets people out to parks they normally wouldn't, and gets them to pick up trash in those parks. Just one motivated individual can clean up a lot of trash, and caching puts hundreds or thousands of them out every weekend.
I do understand the motivation in trying to limit damage to sensitive areas, say, where endangered birds or plants can be found, but cachers are more than willing to try to adopt these reasonable restrictions. There is currently a ban on geocaching in national parks. Guess what? You won't find any caches in national parks. I hope that state parks do not follow suit in making a general ban, but instead work with geocachers to try to establish reasonable guidelines for the placement of caches. The idea of moving caches at least once every 12 months to prevent trail formation is a sane and reasonable solution, and I doubt that any cacher would have any issues with that.
Give it a try. It's a lot of fun.
Environmental hypocrisy (Score:4, Interesting)
awesome! (Score:3, Funny)
Of course, this ruins the old trick of sneaking a bowling ball into a friend's backpack that he'll be forced to hike out with...
Undesireable consequences... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
VIrtual Caches Banned in CO (Score:4, Interesting)
Work to inform park rangers (Score:4, Insightful)
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 [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).
Look at the numbers. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:They call this a sport? (Score:2)
Re:So... (Score:2)
From what I gather from the threads it's got something to do with replacing GPS but no details.