I went ahead and sent an e-mail to the forest preserve and called the number. It was interesting to hear their side of the story (at least the person I talked with) and I came away being less worried about this. They've been debating about this for a while, and some of the rules are in there to appease one group or another. The person I talked with seemed supportive of our activities and assured me that they would not be collecting caches with no warning. He said the part about meeting at the cache site would actually be meeting a ranger at a parking lot who would have a permit (no cost) and stickers to use, and would go over some of the rules. He though some of the rules might change as time goes on and they are shown to be unnecessary.
They plan to contact existing geocache owners and work with them, and there would be 60 days to get it approved. They will also work with geocaching.com to archive sites if necessary.
Another thing he mentioned was that they intend to have maps showing areas where geocaches can or should not be placed - probably sensitive wildlife areas, etc.
My first impression was that geocaching in the DuPage forest preserves was going to be killed off, but now it seems more like an extra hoop to jump through. No one is going to like it and some might pull their caches or have to make some changes, but it's not as drastic as I first thought. Anyway, I plan on trying to get my caches approved, but it looks like I'll have to change some things. Time will tell.
By the way, this is my first post and I'm just paraphrasing what one contact said, so please don't shoot the messenger...
-- TrailRun
