National Geographic And Geocaching

[+Webfoot]

For those of you who are members of the National Geographic Society, you may want to check out the this article in the April edition of NG. Unfortunately, the part concerning geocaching isn't covered in the URL, so I'll quote from the magazine. The gist of the paragraph was talking about theft of fossilized bones in the Badlands National Park.

 

"Besides outright theft, now we have to worry about geo-caching," says Scott Lopez (park's chief ranger and law enforcement officer).  In this latest twist to a treasure hunt, people hide a container and perhaps a trinket, take the GPS coordinates, and put the coordinates on the Internet.  Other people go to the location and try to find the cache.

 

Although a treasure hunt may seem a nuisance at worst, and can have the positive effect of getting people out in nature, Lopez warns of an escalation:  Some geo-cachers are finding fossils in park rocks and putting those coordinates on the Web.  Anyone can then come to look - or to take.

 

Unfortunately, it's not the best positive image we want to portray to the public or the NPS. I'm posting this as an awareness issue for all geocachers.

 

Comments?

[+wray_clan]

I'm not sure, but hasn't this article been discussed in past topics?

[+Renegade Knight]

The escalation is already happening. We keep adding people to our population. Population pressure is going to do more than anything else to these sites.

 

A geocache is a coordinate to a box of junk. The only reason they can have a concertn about that is if they have secretes in the park that they wish to keep. If the parks are a known location where you can find a fossil then advertising it on the web isn't going to change a thing. It's only the actual secretes that are in jeapardy.

 

To be blunt here I didn't know about fossils and the badlands until the discussion about what they quoted in national geographic. Call it an irony.

[+Cache Viking]

Seeing how NG like those fancy maps, they probably put a little one in the article just to show show you the location and make sure you know.

 

Who has the article and can verify this?

[+briansnat]

Comments?

 

This has been commented on in about a half dozen threads.

 

here

 

here

 

here

 

here

 

here

 

and here

[+Renegade Knight]

You forgot here.

[+Webfoot]

Apparently, I didn't do enough Marwelling on this one. Closing the thread.