To those of you worrying about environmental damage...

[2oldfarts (the rockhounders)]

Don't recall of Geocaching causing erosion that effected a trout stream and made it uninhabitable. Likewise with the top soil of a farm.

 

What we do as geocachers has limited impact on the environment compared to other activities.

 

I don't think I said geocaches caused that kind of erosion. Just pointing out that erosion isn't always normal or natural.

 

I agree that our impact is minimal. I said the same thing in an earlier post in this thread.

 

My apologies, I read your post to imply that cachers being reckless along a trout stream would cause an unacceptable degradation of the stream bank and an increase in the bank erosion of that stream.

 

I urge Geocachers to use (But Not Abuse) our great outdoors.

 

John

[+IDLookout]

Maybe but I think it's all important, the big and the small. Ignoring many small abuses adds up to a large one.

 

Exactly. It's like saying "If I throw this can out into the brush, it's no big deal, because of the scale of things"..... So what happens when everyone has this same thought process?

[+Team LaLonde]

I live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, so there are probably 1,000 trees for every person living around here. I'm not one to be super-environmentally friendly ALL the time, but if I see some trash along the trail or things floating in the river I'll pull out a CITO bag.

 

One of my caches got flamed for being in a high erosion area. The whole island it is on is a high erosion area and if you stick to the paths it's not a problem. The problem comes into play when you take the direct route straight up the slope instead of the trail around it. The deer in the area that run up and down the hill and the waves of Lake Superior (which are incredibly powerful year-round) are doing far more damage than the couple dozen geocachers that have found the caches in the area.

 

Hundreds of people visit that park every day. Your cache wasn't causing any harm. What's ironic here is that Marquette County hired skilled archers to thin the deer population in the park. Someone decided the deer were doing too much damage to their own environment.

[+IDLookout]

Hundreds of people visit that park every day. Your cache wasn't causing any harm. What's ironic here is that Marquette County hired skilled archers to thin the deer population in the park. Someone decided the deer were doing too much damage to their own environment.

 

I'm not familiar with that hunt, but odds are that it was a Human-induced problem in the first place.

 

There are thousands more deer in the US today than there ever were before

[+Cpt.Blackbeard]

Hundreds of people visit that park every day. Your cache wasn't causing any harm. What's ironic here is that Marquette County hired skilled archers to thin the deer population in the park. Someone decided the deer were doing too much damage to their own environment.

 

I'm not familiar with that hunt, but odds are that it was a Human-induced problem in the first place.

 

There are thousands more deer in the US today than there ever were before

 

The "Natural" method is for deer populations to grow until there is no longer enough food, then mass starvation and disease takes over and wipes out all but a few survivors. THese survivors then multiply and the cycle repeats.

Natural predators such as wolves and bears do NOT keep populations in check, they just slow it down slightly. When the prey population dies off most of the predator population starves to death as well, then rebounds as the prey population rebounds. Natural death is not kind or pretty.

Game managers try to control the game levels at acceptable levels so the herd stays healthy and the vegetation is not destroyed, the best way to do that is by allowing hunting.

If there is a human induced "Problem" it's that the wildlife is far better off now than at anytime in history.

[+IDLookout]

Hundreds of people visit that park every day. Your cache wasn't causing any harm. What's ironic here is that Marquette County hired skilled archers to thin the deer population in the park. Someone decided the deer were doing too much damage to their own environment.

 

I'm not familiar with that hunt, but odds are that it was a Human-induced problem in the first place.

 

There are thousands more deer in the US today than there ever were before

 

The "Natural" method is for deer populations to grow until there is no longer enough food, then mass starvation and disease takes over and wipes out all but a few survivors. THese survivors then multiply and the cycle repeats.

Natural predators such as wolves and bears do NOT keep populations in check, they just slow it down slightly. When the prey population dies off most of the predator population starves to death as well, then rebounds as the prey population rebounds. Natural death is not kind or pretty.

Game managers try to control the game levels at acceptable levels so the herd stays healthy and the vegetation is not destroyed, the best way to do that is by allowing hunting.

If there is a human induced "Problem" it's that the wildlife is far better off now than at anytime in history.

 

In many parts of the country, deer have been introduced into areas they never existted or allowed to overpopulate by human intervention. This is what I'm talking about.

[mtbikernate]

 

The "Natural" method is for deer populations to grow until there is no longer enough food, then mass starvation and disease takes over and wipes out all but a few survivors. THese survivors then multiply and the cycle repeats.

Natural predators such as wolves and bears do NOT keep populations in check, they just slow it down slightly. When the prey population dies off most of the predator population starves to death as well, then rebounds as the prey population rebounds. Natural death is not kind or pretty.

Game managers try to control the game levels at acceptable levels so the herd stays healthy and the vegetation is not destroyed, the best way to do that is by allowing hunting.

If there is a human induced "Problem" it's that the wildlife is far better off now than at anytime in history.

 

I agree with your statement for the most part (minus the whole 'mass extinction and disease' bit...not quite. in a healthy system, population fluctuations are usually due to alterations in reproductive success rather than outright starvation and disease)...until your last sentence. Deer overpopulation is so bad in parts of Wisconsin and Michigan (made worse by shortsighted game management) that diseases like chronic wasting disease and bovine tuberculosis are running rampant. Here in PA, the deer are eating EVERYTHING that's edible leaving vast swaths of nothing but bracken fern, which is toxic and inedible to deer. This is entirely a human-induced problem because we've eliminated the deer's predators, leaving ourselves as the sole predators that really don't do enough to keep the populations of deer in this country from eating themselves into starvation. Mass starvation and rampant disease are an indication of a very unhealthy system.

 

If we really wanted hunting to be the solution, our game managers would more heavily support the hunting of does. Removing females of breeding age from the population will do far more to curb population growth than hunting the males of the species. Males can and will impregnate as many females as possible, but a given female can only be impregnated by one male per season. The breeding capacity of deer is determined by the population of females, not males.

 

How this really relates with the impact of geocaching on our forested lands is beyond me. Are the deer creating social trails so they can find caches? Are the deer, in their search for a submerged cache, silting up the local trout streams causing major fish kills? Regardless, it's our responsibility to respect the land we use and live on because we don't truly own it. Legally speaking, we might, or that land might be held in trust for the public, but in all reality, what we do to the land now will echo into the future. Other people, and possibly our own children and grandchildren and beyond will have to live with the decisions we made about how we're going to treat the land, air, and water. We should keep this in mind at all times, not just when geocaching. But, since geocaching typically involves use of land held in trust for the public, it means we ought to be more careful, because that land is there for everyone to use, and it's just downright disrespectful and rude to treat it poorly. I can't say I've seen major problems, but I do occasionally find geotrash that people may or may not have inadvertently dropped in the woods. I'd be the very last person to purposefully drop trash in the woods, but I'd hope that if I accidentally dropped some trash, someone along later might be kind enough to pick it up.

[+Cpt.Blackbeard]

Hundreds of people visit that park every day. Your cache wasn't causing any harm. What's ironic here is that Marquette County hired skilled archers to thin the deer population in the park. Someone decided the deer were doing too much damage to their own environment.

 

I'm not familiar with that hunt, but odds are that it was a Human-induced problem in the first place.

 

There are thousands more deer in the US today than there ever were before

 

The "Natural" method is for deer populations to grow until there is no longer enough food, then mass starvation and disease takes over and wipes out all but a few survivors. THese survivors then multiply and the cycle repeats.

Natural predators such as wolves and bears do NOT keep populations in check, they just slow it down slightly. When the prey population dies off most of the predator population starves to death as well, then rebounds as the prey population rebounds. Natural death is not kind or pretty.

Game managers try to control the game levels at acceptable levels so the herd stays healthy and the vegetation is not destroyed, the best way to do that is by allowing hunting.

If there is a human induced "Problem" it's that the wildlife is far better off now than at anytime in history.

 

In many parts of the country, deer have been introduced into areas they never existted or allowed to overpopulate by human intervention. This is what I'm talking about.

Ah, on that I can agree, man has and still does cause many problems by introducing non-native species to new areas, you'd think we would learn.

[+FireRef]

I agree with the conservationist vs preservationist argument earlier...

 

I don't go out of my way to damage the environment, but me walking through the woods isn't any more/less damaging than an animal walking through the same stretch of woods. So I'm not going any more out of my way to lessen my "walking" impact. Take nothing/leave nothing is ok, but then again, animals poop all the time (they don't use toilet paper) and eat things in the woods.

 

I can see not leaving tires and plastic containers behind, but getting ridiculous about what you do to protect the environment is, to me, silly.

 

I conserve water, I changed most of my lights to fluorescents, and pick up trash when I can. Common sense things - I conserve, not preserve.