Thanks to Steve, Larry and all the others who took the time to participate in this important meeting, and give us a report. Great work!
Thanks,
Trisha "Lightning"
Press-kitt
On Sat, 28 September 2002, "Team Tierra Buena" wrote:
Message
An interesting
coincidence, perhaps, but today (Saturday the 28th) is National Public Lands
Day. See
http://www.az.blm.gov/npld_showcase.htm.
I knew there was some kind of Public Land exhibit in downtown Phoenix yesterday,
but I didn't know why. Now I know.
Chelby wrote
earlier:
> Well,
I'm going to stop talking now...I know Steve is probably writing > a huge summary of everything as we
speak!:)
Actually, Steve
spent the day catching up on some sleep and watching the Ryder Cup matches on
TV. And I now see that several of those who attended have already posted some
in-depth reports. I thank you all for those, and I'll just add a few
observations here.
It's been said
already, but I think the most important lesson we learned last night was that by
and large, the land management agencies are fine with Geocaching, if we only
follow our own rules!
First, get
permission. We no longer have any excuse to not do that. Don't know who to ask,
or aren't sure what agency has jurisdiction? Ask here on the list server, or try
the BLM's Public Lands Information Center in Phoenix (
http://azwww.az.blm.gov/PLIC.htm).
According to one of the BLM representatives at the meeting last night, that
office should have contact information for just about any agency in the state.
We know tribal lands
are off-limits (and another thought: even if you got permission from tribal
officials to place a cache on their lands, everyone who wanted to hunt it would
have to get permission to visit it). Same for archaeological sites (more on that
in a minute), and designated wilderness areas. As you've already read, the door
was opened that NPS would at least entertain the idea of caches on their lands.
We're still lucky enough to have millions of acres of public land in the state
that we CAN use. The USFS representative invited cachers to consult with his
office on cache placement. I can't quote what he said word-for-word, but he made
a point of saying that the rangers probably know about lots of potential cache
sites that we don't know about.
We've all been asked
to take a more active role in education. Things like more emphasis on staying on
trails, leave no trace, cache in trash out, etc. These are things you can
mention in your cache descriptions when you place them. I'm planning to write to
Jeremy to propose that new subscribers get an email with either a
statement of the rules and policies or at least the links to where those
policies can be found. (Could any of you here who are more recent subscribers to
geocaching.com refresh my memory what kind of emails, if any, you DO get
when you first enroll? Thanks.)
I'd ask all of you
to consider reaching out to new cachers when you meet them on the trail or see
them log one of your caches. I mentioned this about a week ago, but if you can
help spread this around, particularly amongst cachers who perhaps don't visit
this mailing list or this web site, it would be very helpful.
Something else we've
been asked to do: If you're out in public lands and find, for example, an area
where someone has dumped construction materials, or a vandalized area, or
something similar, mark a waypoint where the damage is, and contact the
responsible agency when you get back as to what you found and where it is. If we
can be extra eyes for the agencies, it's to our mutual
benefit.
On the
situation with the archaeological sites and site stewards. As Ken described in
his post, in this one case we appear to have a conflict between one agency that
is encouraging people to visit a particular area, and another agency charged
with minimizing visitation to that same area. I have visited the site in
question and I agree with Ken's arguments in this situation. At the same time, I
do recognize that the site stewards are trying to do what they've been charged
to do. We will probably have to deal with situations like this on a case-by-case
basis, but at least now we can discuss them directly with the appropriate
people.
Finally, I'd like to
remind everyone here that a lot of people probably learned about
azgeocaching.com last night. They may be "stopping by" the listserv or even
"settling in". What they read here will probably affect how they perceive
Geocachers. You never know who, or even how many, may be reading over your
shoulder.
Thanks to all the
cachers who participated last night. I think we're seeing Geocaching coming of
age in Arizona.
SteveTeam Tierra Buena
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"Although no one can go back and
make a brand new start,
Anyone can start from now and
make a brand new ending."
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