When you think about
the damage other types of recreational and economic uses are doing, caching
seems extremely low impact by comparison. So cows are OK, but not caches?

I guess this would be my question too. It would seem that more people engage in other types of activity that would cause more problems than geocaching. In other words, I can tell my friends that he/she should hike to this really cool, off-trail location that I found in a National Forest, but if it's posted on a website as a geocache then it's against the rules. Either way there is a possibility of a new trail being started as people find out about this location. I'm not sure of the difference. Isn't geocaching (in National Forests) just hiking with a goal of finding the cache. If the concern is new trails being started, then wouldn't they just have to ban hiking altogether? The problem of new trails isn't really going to diminish by just banning the few (in comparison) geocachers.

I'm not trying to stir things up, but this kind of doesn't make any sense. I certainly understand the need of the rangers to protect our National Forests and I appreciate their effors, but it seems like they are trying to correct some issues by banning a very small (in comparison to other activities) group of people.