Land Management and Permission

[+Touchstone]

I just had a very interesting talk with a State Park employee and I thought I'd ask for guidance from individuals on the forum that have more experience than I.

 

I called the special events coordinator for one of our local State Parks to ask how much it would cost to reserve a sight in the picnic area. Well, it didn't take long for the conversation to turn to geocaching, and he had alot of questions, and concerns about the activity. It turns out that memos have been flying back and forth for weeks, if not months about how to handle this new sport within the State Parks. The conversation of cordial and friendly, but I wasn't sure about what would be the best way to explain geocaching in general. I offered to meet with the supervisor of the park in question to show what all goes on with this crazy activity and try to address some of the conerns they might have.

 

Any comments and suggestions?

 

Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. The rest go geocaching.

[+Salvelinus]

Other states land management agencies are adopting policies and guidelines for geocaching on those lands.

 

My state of PA has recently worked out a relatively good policy and guidlines for geocaching on State Parks and in State Forests.

 

Here is the link to their new geocaching guidelines.

 

Maybe you can direct your State Parks people to these guidelines.

 

Salvelinus

 

"The trail will be long and full of frustrations. Life is a whole and good and evil must be accepted together"

 

Ralph Abele

[+Bilder]

Take a sample geocache with you. Put in some of the typical items found in a cache. This will give them an actual cache to look at and will help them see that it is pretty harmless. Dont forget to include the geocaching letter!

 

Also, take a 35mm film canister. Make a CITO sticker, put it on the canister and then stuff a grocery store bag in the canister. Be sure and explain CITO to them as well as have a canister in the sample cache. I did this with the local parks director and it won some major points for geocaching.

 

Another thing I did was to make a list of caches in area parks showing the average visits per week the caches get. You do not have to list the cache name, just list the park, how long the cache has been in place and the average visits per week/per month. This helps show that geocaching is not 500 folks a day tramping through the woods.

 

There is a power point presentation out there as well that gives a great overview on geocaching. If you have a laptop, you may want to look into showing that as well.

 

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I have never been lost. Been awful confused for a few days, but never lost!

N61.12.041 W149.43.734

[+Markwell]

Here's Illinois'. Not too bad, but I kinda don't like the transparent container portion. Makes you use inferior material.

 

Markwell

Chicago Geocaching

[+Touchstone]

Wow! You guys are like a geocaching SWAT team of information. I even got a nice, but large, email from geospotter with the Powerpoint presentation attached. I feel better armed for the conflict now.

 

"Once more into the breach my friends..."

 

Any stories concerning permissions, bad and good, would be nice to hear too.

 

Thanks

 

Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. The rest go geocaching.

[+Ttepee]

I approached a local state park here in NY about a year and a half ago now. They asked me to put my request in writing. I wrote up a request detailing where I wanted to hide these caches along with general geocaching information and sample cache pages from other organizations I have received permission from. I submitted this request and checked back with the office once a month or so. After about 3 months it seemed all the personel in the office had changed and no one knew anything about my request and told me to resubmit it. I did just that and once again followed up finally with a call to the regional director. I was told these things take time.

 

When PA came up with their cooperative policy I went back to the local office to talk to them about it suggesting they look at PA's policy. In the mean time caches had been placed in this local park and the park was aware of their prescence if not exact location and seemed to have a positive reaction to them. At that point I decided that NY state as a whole is choosing to turn a blind eye towards our sport and I went out and placed the caches that no one would take responsibility for authorizing.

 

I have another cache placed in an upstate state park and the land use manager there has been very supportive and cooperative towards my existing cache along with future caches I've discussed placing. So here in NY it seems their not quite ready to create policy towards geocaching. Maybe they're waiting to see if the popularity peters out before they put in the effort, I don't know. But I feel confident in the fact that they will not be able to come back to me and say that I never asked.

 

It can be awkward approaching officials but in the long run I feel better about my cache placement when I feel that I've made an effort to alert the proper authorities of it's presence.

 

Good Luck out there... sounds like you might have a similar situation going on in Ca.

[+Touchstone]

quote:

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Good Luck out there... sounds like you might have a similar situation going on in Ca.

---

 

Thanks, although pretty miniscule problem compared to what else is going on in CA (i.e. our new Govenator )

 

Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. The rest go geocaching.

[+Bilder]

The city parks director liked the idea of geocaching so much after I talked with him that he is thinking of giving geocaching a small blurb in the city parks and activities guide that is published twice a year.

 

He was wanting to have some guidelines for placement, but I have not heard back from him on what he wanted to do. Most of his concerns were already covered in the Geocaching.com rules for cache placement.

 

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I have never been lost. Been awful confused for a few days, but never lost!

N61.12.041 W149.43.734

[+Byron & Anne]

Maybe the "Land Managers" need to come up with a policy on picnicing. The kinds of food you should bring with you, or not bring should be included in this policy. Maybe a policy on the kind, size and shape of the frisby you wish to play with. Table cloth color and size need to be included.

Yup, we need a policy on every activity that comes along.

 

Byron