All of these topics are being discussed on a world-wide basis in detail at
the Geocaching discussion board.
www.geocaching.com/discuss
<
http://www.geocaching.com/discuss> I went to get specific discussion
threads to reference, but the discussion board is currently down for
maintenance. Do a search for the proper threads.
Larry Farquhar
Team "Wyle E"
www.azjeeper.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Jerry B Nelson [
mailto:peakbagger2@juno.com]
Sent: Friday, December 28, 2001 11:36 AM
To:
az-geocaching@listserv.snaptek.com
Subject: [Az-Geocaching] The Future of Geocaching
Two recent posts, one concerning geocaching etiquette and another relating
an incident where the cache seeker felt that a cache was placed in an
unsuitable location, have rekindled a general concern for the sport that
I've had since I first learned about it.
Geocaching is a very new activity for me so I haven't seen public
discussions of it until the last few weeks. If the subject of this post has
been beaten up in the past then I apologize, but would like to have a brief
summary of where folks stand. If not, then this may start or continue a
needed discussion.
Geocaching is still a small, low impact sport. I believe it's been less
than two years since the GPS was given the precision to allow finding a
location to within 10-20 feet. Presently there are over 250 caches in
Arizona and growing steadily. It's not inconceivable that we could grow
exponentially for some time. If we double each year for only seven years
there will be over thirty thousand caches in the state. This obviously
seems impossible at present but my point is that given the potential of the
sport, it could easily grow much larger than we now experience. Now is the
time to be proactive about discussing possible future effects on public
lands and placing some rules to prevent problems with Forest Service, BLM,
state land and urban park managers, not to mention the moral issue of
protecting our environment in general.
Topics may include policies for placing caches in designated wilderness
areas (there should be none is the obvious answer for me) and removing
caches or not placing them at all in fragile and/or high use conditions.
There might come a time when we are so large that a limit should be imposed
on the "life span" of a cache before it should be removed, or an upper limit
on the number of caches placed within a given area, etc. In general, we
need to keep this sport as the pleasurable while still land friendly
activity it now enjoys.
Again, if all this is reinventing the wheel and such policies have already
been put in place, let me know where I can find them.
I'll stop here and add further opinions when I see where this thread goes.
My guess is that the majority, if not all of us, appreciate the natural
areas of Arizona enough that we place our sport second to protection of the
locations that are already often too negatively impacted by other forces.
Jerry Nelson
Offtrail
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