Dear Team Tierra Buena (Steve), Thank you for taking the time to put all of this in writing. It seems clear to us that both Arizona Geocachers and the entire Geocaching community owe you a debt of gratitude for your ongoing Geo-advocacy. Your interpretation of the distinction between virtual and physical caches certainly makes sense to us. We truly hope that you are able to effectively convey this message and level of understanding to those in Arizona and elsewhere who need to understand. Hopefully, all parties can agree on a set of rules/guidelines that takes this distinction into consideration while maintaining appropriate protections for our environment and archaeological treasures. With such an environmentally conscious geocaching community, maintaining these protections is not such a difficult task. Additionally, maintaining one consolidated focal point for rules regarding Arizona geocaches will definitely serve both the community and the land managers. At the very least, it will make eradication of all geocaches by certain stewards a lot more difficult to justify (hopefully impossible). May your advocacy efforts have the precise effect that they merit. Please do not hesitate to contact us if there is anything that we can do to assist you. Additionally, please keep us posted on ongoing developments. Your successful actions may eventually become a plan of action for other geocachers in other states who are in similar situations. One (not so) small step for AZ Geocachers, one giant leap for Geocaching kind. :) Happy Geocaching! Sincerely, Bryan Roth Groundspeak, Inc. P 206.302.7721 x103 F 206.374.8161 bryan@groundspeak.com Original Message Follows: ------------------------ From: "Team Tierra Buena" Subject: Site Stewards and SHPO Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2003 21:33:02 -0700 I received a phone call a few minutes ago from Mary Estes, who is the Resource Protection Specialist for the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) of Arizona State Parks. She has the overall responsibility for all the Site Stewards in Arizona. We spoke at length about some of the recent issues that have surfaced, including the Deer Valley Rock Art Center (DVRAC) virtual cache, and the Goat Camp Cache http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?ID=648). I tried to express, and I believe Mary understands, my concerns about both of these situations. I believe I also understand her concerns. On DVRAC, I can assure you that Mary understands the difference between a virtual and a physical cache. But Mary came away from the first land managers' meeting last September with the understanding that the land managers wanted cachers to obtain permission for placing ALL caches, physical or virtual. I do not recall that explicitly being stated at that meeting. At the same time, being a cacher, I would probably have interpreted the phrase "all caches" to mean "all physical caches", but non-cachers could understandably fail to make that distinction. At the second land managers' meeting in January, we all agreed to hold another meeting in September of this year, although we will not start planning that meeting until June. I told Mary that I intend to make the topic of virtual caches an agenda item at that time. I think that if we have the opportunity to explain virtual caches to that audience, we will be able to exempt them from any permission requirements, as long as the virtual locations don't threaten archaeological sites. Moving on to Goat Camp, I pointed out that not a single land management agency has yet to post any set of rules for caching or cache placement on the Web, in spite of requests that they do so. During the conversation, I came to the conclusion that there had been a different kind of miscommunication. I believe Mary was under the impression that we were going to post the rules somewhere, or that the agencies would get them posted either on geocaching.com or azgeocaching. com. As a result of this phone call, she sees the need for the land management agencies to post the rules on their respective web sites. She offered to contact all the land managers herself and repeat this request, and explain to them why it was necessary for it to be on their sites. I in turn agreed to be a collection point for the land managers. When they have posted their rules, they will email me the links to their rules pages. Once I have a good number of them, I'll forward them on to Brian and Jason at azgeocaching.com, and I assume and hope they will be able to set up a links section for this on the azgeocaching.com site. It will then be up to all of us to spread the word about that central source. Yes, there are Site Stewards within SHPO who seem as though they will not be satisfied until all Geocaching is eradicated. But we also know there are Site Stewards who are Geocachers themselves. I do believe that as long as we keep working with SHPO and the land managers we will be able to develop ways to continue caching on our public lands without jeopardizing our historical heritage. Steve Team Tierra Buena