Electric Mouse

The Lincoln, Nebraska City Parks have set the following guidelines Please note that caches are not allowed in the Pioneers Park Nature Center, Antelope Park Rose Garden, or Sunken Gardens. The two existing caches in the Nature Center will be allowed to stay but the center would like the owners to contact them. I will email those two owners with information. Here are the guidelines: Purpose: The following guidelines provide direction for placement of geocachies in park and open spaces managed by the City of Lincoln Parks and Recreation Department. A geocache is a hidden cache intended to be located using a Global Positioning System (GPS ) device. These guidelines are to be posted on the City of Lincoln website, and available at the Park and Recreation Administration Office. 1. A permit is not required to place a geocache in park or open space area managed by the City of Lincoln Parks and Recreation Department. However, caches found to be in violation of these guidelines will be removed and disposed. In addition, the violating cache will be reported to the Geocaching website: http://www.geocaching.com 2. Geocaches may not be placed in the Pioneers Park Nature Center in the western portion of Pioneers Park, the Sunken Gardens, ot the Antelope Park Rose Garden due to the sensetive nature of the landscape in these areas. 3. Geocaches may not be buried. Placement of a geocache may not involve digging or displacement of soil. 4. A cache should be a small, sealable, weather-resistant container. The cache should be clearly labeled with a permanent marking including the name of the cache and appropriate contact information (e.g. Geocaching.com). The cache may contain a pencil or pen, a log book, a disposable camera, and/or inexpensive trinkets for exchange. Items in the cache must be "family friendly" (i.e. no pornography, explosives, or alcohol, tobacco, firearms or drugs etc.) The cache should not contain food. 5. Once the geocache is placed, it is the responsibility of the individual to maintain the cache and the area around it. The area should be visited as often as necessary to assure that the cache is in good repair, and that it is not negatively impacting the surrounding area. The individual is responsible for removing the cache when it has been taken out of use. 6. The Parks and Recreation Department will not be responsible for damage, destruction or loss of caches placed in parks or open space areas.

I am cross posting this from the Nebraskache yahoo group: I have been in contact with a woman from the Lower South Platte NRD. She seems quite easy to work with. The new permit policy is very similar to the Game and Parks policy. The permit is free and applies only to the Lower South Platte NRD properties. I will get a list of those posted in the next day or so, but you can also obtain information about their properties at their web site: http://www.lpsnrd.org The agency plans to make the policy and the necessary form available on their web site soon. I am currently obtaining information about how to handle existing caches. It sounds like they will not require existing cache owners to come in and fill out the forms and instead will likely allow them to email the information. I have also suggested them allowing me to simply send them a list of exisiting cache locations, but I suspect they will want the cache owners to supply information. The person I wrote to said that they are not in any particular rush to get that done, so there will be plenty of time. I also inquired about whether other NRDs were considering similar policies and I will let you know the answer to that. Another inquiry I made was about the status of Wildwood lake because my understanding is that while Wildwood is NRD property it is also managed by Game and Parks as a Wildlife Management Area. Here is the text of the NRD Policy: PERMITS, SPECIAL OCCASION I. CACHE PERMITS: 1. Placement of a cache on Lower Platte South Natural Resources District (LPSNRD) property must be secured with a Special Occasion Permit. LPSNRD property allowing the placement of caches includes: Community Wetlands Management Areas, Conservation Corridors and Wildlife Management Areas. Permits may be obtained by contacting the LPSNRD office at (402) 476-2729, on-line at www.lpsnrd.org or in person at 3125 Portia Street, Lincoln, NE 68521. 2. The person applying for a permit must provide a valid address, telephone number, e-mail address, vehicle license number and the web site address on which the cache will be posted. 3. The location of the cache must be pre-approved by the General Manager whose main concern will be public safety and the prevention of undesirable impacts to natural and cultural resources. The General Manager will advise of any off limits areas, other permitted caches and possible prescribed burn areas for the calendar year. 4. Once the cache is placed, the applicant must return to the LPSNRD office to record the exact cache location, including GPS coordinates, which will be added to the permit. 5. All permits will be in effect for the calendar year. A new permit will need to be applied for and authorized each year. NOTE: If during the effective period of a permit, a permit holder wants to change the location of the cache, a new permit must be issued and the effective permit cancelled. 6. Upon the expiration of a permit, the permit holder is responsible for removing the cache and for removing the cache location from all web sites and any information source. If the permit holder fails to remove the cache, it will be removed by LPSNRD staff and held for ten (10) days after which staff will dispose of the cache. Confiscation and disposal by staff will be recorded and filed. II. CACHE CONTAINERS AND CONTENTS: 1. Cache containers must be non-breakable, waterproof and have some form of latch or other closing mechanism to prohibit content exposure to wildlife. 2. Cache containers must be marked “Geocache Container” on the outside of the container. 3. Caches may not contain inappropriate or dangerous items. Such items include, but are not limited to; food, medications, personal/hygiene products, pornography, weapons of any type, etc. Log books are encouraged in lieu of exchange items. 4. All caches are subject to random inspection by LPSNRD staff. Staff has the authority to immediately remove any item held in a cache deemed unacceptable. 5. Non-permitted caches will be removed by area staff and held for 30 days. An attempt will be made to locate the cache owner. If the cache is not claimed in 30 days, staff will dispose of the cache. III. CACHE LOCATIONS: 1. The location of a cache must be pre-approved by the General Manager. 2. Physical caches are prohibited inside or attached to any LPSNRD facility or structure. 3. Caches may not be placed in locations that may lead to the creation of spur trails. 4. Caches may not be placed in dangerous, inappropriate, or protected areas and habitats, on cliffs, underground or underwater. 5. No digging is permitted. Caches cannot be buried, nor may soil, vegetation or stones be disturbed to place a cache. IV. COMPLIANCE 1. The use of metal detectors in cache searches is expressly prohibited. 2. If geocaching activities as a whole are found to have negative impact on LPSNRD resources or if safety becomes an issue in geocache searches, the General Manager may ban geocaching from certain areas of LPSNRD property. 3. Failure to comply with LPSNRD guidelines will result in the revocation of effective geocaching permits. Continued failure to comply with these guidelines will prevent the issuance of any further geocaching permits to the non-compliant group or individual. VISIT: www.geocaching.com

Hi all, I just recieved a call from a Journal Star reporter who wanted to know about the new NRD policy. I knew nothing about it. Anyway, they have set up a basic free permit policy. From what I gather, it is similar to the State Game and Parks policy and it sounds like it should not be a difficult process. I got a phone number for a person to talk to and plan to try to call him either over lunch today or tomorrow for more details. For example, I do not know if the policy applies only to the Lincoln area NRD or to all etc. (Nebraska has around 13 NRDs) I will find this out tomorrow. In the meantime, please be aware that a permit is now needed to place a cache on NRD property. I will post detailed info here, on the Nebraskache list and on the electric mouse profile when I have it. The NRDs normally operate various rails to trails trails and some wildlife type areas (Timber Point and Meadowlark are the ones around this area). On a side note: I have learned through the grapevine that Lincoln Parks and Rec decided not to regulate caching, but will likely remove and throw away a cache if they come across one. The lesson there being to hide your caches well! Finally, I know that some people feel offended by permit policies. Personally I don't mind them as long as they are resonable. I understand why land managers would want to know where caches are on their land. Of course if they start charging and such I would be annoyed. In the end, permit policies make my reviewing job harder, and make people have to jump through an extra hoop to place a cache, but I suspect they also avoid things like park managers calling in the bomb squad etc. when they find a cache in their park.

I posted the following quote awhile back in response to this question. If you follow the link there, and more so, the links within it, you will find quite a bit of info. I apologize for not stating more here. It is just that I think it is better to point out the links than to re-invent the wheel and write a ton on it when others have covered it pretty well through all those links.

I was once asked to address this question in a local list, which I did. Since it has come up here, I will also answer it here in case locals who read here are interested or if it helps see another general reviewer perspective. My policy is that I do not FTF any multi-caches or puzzle caches that I review. That is because I am given the coordinates for the stages and final cache as part of the process. Although I would never "cheat" and use those, a FTF could always lead to the appearance of that, and so I don't do FTF on those. It helps that I also don't care much about being FTF. In rare cases involving puzzles, I have asked another reviewer to take the cache because I like puzzles and don't want to accidentally get a spoiler in a reviewer note. Even when I ask another reviewer to take the cache, I still avoid being FTF. If for some reason a hard puzzle went unfound for sometime and I did not review it, I might consider asking the cache owner if they minded if I was FTF, but I would do that only with the owner's permission and wouldn't feel comfortable taking any special FTF prize. With regular caches, I also avoid FTF, but don't sweat it alot. I would never plug the coords in my GPS, hit the approve button and run out of the house to get the cache. But if the cache is still sitting there unfound a few days later and I want to go caching and it is a cache I want to find, I will find it. But even there I would avoid taking a FTF prize if I listed the cache. Generally even with "regular" caches I try to avoid FTF. I would rather see others who like to get FTFs get that. As for reviewers listing their own caches: I don't. I pass those off to another reviewer and leave the normal reviewer note to cover any issues etc., just like any other cacher should. It doesn't bother me though if some reviewers want to review their own caches. The reviewers tend to have a good history and know the rules, so I am not worried about things getting listed there that shouldn't. I personally prefer to have others list my caches though.

At times things get busy, this is especially true around the holidays. I would guess that you will hear soon about the cache. As for how a person becomes a reviewer see my previous post in this thread and the links I provided for information on that.

Angusfire, I took a look and your cache was placed on hold by CO Admin with a note. You should have received that note via email. Check the cache page and you will see his note at the bottom of the page. You might also double check your email. If you did not receive the email that is automatically sent when a reviewer posts a note, check your spam filter settings. Sometimes the email will get kicked into those. I have come across several people before who never got emails I sent because of spam filter settings.

My understanding is that the issue of any delays in Oklahoma has been addressed. Although that is not my area, I am not aware of any current problems. Information on how reviewers are appointed can be found in this thread. There are links in there to more detailed threads. I figured I would just provide a link instead of attempting to repeat all the information that can be gained from reading that thread and the threads it links to.

Happy Holidays and a wonderful New Year to everyone! May the next year bring you many fine caches and experiences.

The kids accidentally found the cache. The pornographic item was a single 5x7 photograph set on top of the items in the cache. If it had been an entire magazine I would agree that it looked like kids hiding their illiocit materials from their parents. With it being a single photo, I suspect someone put it there for shock value, but who knows? Forutunately everyone involved seems to understand that our hobby does not condone such things and views it more as an unfortunate incident.

Hello. I have been contacted by a reporter in Omaha Nebraska who is investigating an incident where children found pornography in a cache. We believe that the material was left by a non-cacher. I offered to provide a statement regarding what was being done to address the problem for the news story. In response to the incident, I have temporarily disabled the cache at issue and asked the owner to re-check it with the strong suggestion that it be moved or archived. I also am requesting that Omaha cache owners check their caches for inappropriate materials on the off chance that someone has left inappropriate items in multiple caches. With the leaves falling from the trees and the grasses dying down, this is a good time of year to double check that your caches are well hidden anyway. I would greatly appreciate it if Omaha people could go out and double check their caches. Hopefully this was a single unfortunate incident and fortunately it sounds like the people involved are not blaming caching or complaining about our hobby. Instead they are more generally concerned about people leaving pornographic materials in the parks. The news reporter has also interviewed a local cacher for the news story.

Hi! I sent you an email with the email address of the Oklahoma reviewer. I peeked at your cache page and the reviewer had put it on hold, but I did not see a reviewer note. So he or she has looked at the cache page. Because it looks like it is a more complicated cache than the norm, it might just be taking him or her a little longer to review it. Plus the weekend holiday now could be slowing things down a bit. Also, with a more complicated cache, sometimes reviewers take care of the easy ones first and then go back to the harder caches. It also is possible that they emailed you and a spam filter kicked the email out. A good test there is to see if you got my email. If you didn't, check your spam filters. If you did get mine, then use the address I sent you to contact the reviewer. I hope this helps! Feel free to contact me if you have questions. E Mouse