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I'm no fan of geocaching. I place using advanced technology to create a hide and seek game, on a par with Lazer-Tag. If folks wish to play this game that's fine. WHERE they play it is, however, another matter. The appended article from today's Oregonian is about playing the game in the proposed Badlands Wilderness located about 20 miles from where I now sit. It's a good, balanced, article that is well worth reading.
I've followed the geocaching issue since its inception and have recently begun finding growing and sometimes striking, if not disturbing, similarities between the issues surrounding geocaching and the issues surrounding motorized recreation. Clearly, advocates for this activity have become much more organized and, so it appears, have paid particularly close attention to the efforts of the BlueRibbon Coalition and similar motorized recreation advocates as they've worked to develop their own messaging in defense of their own activity.
Motorized recreation has its "Tread Lightly Campaign", geocaching has its "Cache In Trash Out" campaign. Both motorized recreation and geocaching are "Access" issues. Just as motorized recreationists argue that their sport is compatible with Wilderness, so do geocachers. And in the way motorized recreation advocates like to point out that this activity is good for economic development and rural tourism, geocachers the same.
If you think about it, most recreation "access" issues share these commonalties, do they not?
The person profiled in this article, Bob Spiek, is a personal friend and strong champion of protecting the Badlands as Wilderness. Bob's a staunch opponent of fee-demo and is committed in his opposition of the American Recreation Coalition's entire Industrial Strength Wreckreation agenda. For all of those things and for his great support of my own work, I thank Bob immensely. We differ in opinion over geocaching. I wonder how Bob and other geocachers who share his broader views would respond to this next passage quoted from an article published just last week:
Derrick Crandall, president of the American Recreation Coalition, envisions using high-tech recreation to draw a new generation to the national forests. The Forest Service could open its lands to geocaching -- a sort of scavenger hunt in which participants follow clues posted on the Internet and use handheld global positioning systems to locate hiding places for items. "I do think we have to understand that recreation on a national forest needs to change," Crandall said. Crandall doesn't believe that he is proposing to turn forestlands into amusement parks as some environmental activists fear now that the federal government is looking to charge more recreation fees.
Scott
--- begin quoted ---
February 11, 2005
GPS-driven geocaching falls astray of plans for Badlands east of Bend
A
ban is planned in the proposed 32,000-acre wilderness for the growing
sport that involves searching for planted items
MATTHEW PREUSCH
BEND -- Robert Speik ducks under barbed wire, crosses a patch of
rabbitbrush and climbs a protrusion of lava rock in the Badlands to
look for a box of trinkets.
After a mile's hike, he finds the stash underneath a boulder and
surveys the contents -- dog biscuits, stickers, a toy frog, a shot
glass and other items -- but the real reward is the view of the Cascade
Range to the west from atop the lava.
"This is just such a magical place to come out and wander around in," he says.
But soon the 77-year-old Speik may not be able to go on his modern-day
treasure hunts anymore in the Badlands. He's among a new wave of
outdoors enthusiasts known as geocachers who use satellite-guided
navigation and the Internet to find hidden "caches" all over the
country.
This spring, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, citing potential
environmental harm, plans to ban geocaching in the Badlands, a
32,000-acre proposed wilderness about 15 miles east of Bend.
The sport has become one of the fastest-growing activities on public
lands, pushing managers from the bureau down to city park
groundskeepers to develop rules to handle the phenomenon.
Here's how it works: Someone hides a "cache" -- usually small
ammunition boxes or plastic containers -- and posts the coordinates on
www.geocaching.com. People go to the Web site and search the list of
caches, numbering more than 100,000 across the United States.
They find one in their area and punch the coordinates into a
satellite-guided global positioning system device, or GPS unit, which
directs them to the concealed cache.
Federal agencies don't have a unified policy to deal with geocaching.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, for instance, has banned it
outright, but the BLM and others leave local managers to develop
specific guidelines for caches on their land.
"There's a learning curve for both the land management agencies and the
user groups," said Greg Currie, a recreation planner with the BLM in
Prineville.
If land managers are confused, so are geocachers. The piecemeal
policies are a frequent topic of rumor, discussion and frustration in
chat rooms on the Web site.
"I understand that on an intellectual level, it's better management of
the public spaces if we get permission for each placement," one
geocacher wrote on the site. "On the other hand, that formal step sucks
a lot of the fun, semi-subversive nature out of the activity."
Existing bans
In Oregon, geocaching is banned in federal wilderness areas, national
wildlife refuges and the state's only national park, Crater Lake.
A few years ago, caches placed along the rim above Crater Lake caused
some people to trample on sensitive off-trail vegetation, said Peter
Reinhardt, the park's acting chief ranger.
"It caused some problems for us because it concentrates the use," he
said, and "we manage (the park) to protect those natural resources."
In the Badlands, the BLM has concluded that geocachers traversing the
shrub steppe landscape or scrambling over rocks pose a threat to the
delicate ecosystem.
Though the BLM will allow geocaching on most of its other lands in
Central Oregon, it wants to keep the sport out of the Badlands, where
about 15 caches are hidden in gnarled junipers or out-of-the-way lava
fissures.
Five years ago, geocaching was an obscure technophile pastime. Today,
more than 140,000 caches are planted in 200 countries. About 1,200 of
those are within 100 miles of Bend.
Some land managers consider geocaching little more than organized
littering. In 2003, the Fish and Wildlife Service warned geocachers in
a letter to the Web site that "federal officers have begun prosecuting
individuals involved in geocaching on national wildlife refuges which
results in a permanent federal criminal record following conviction in
a federal court."
Monitoring the Web site
Marvin Lang, a recreational forester with the U.S. Forest Service in
Bend, said his agency monitors the Web site to see if any illegal
caches have been hidden in his district. His rangers have removed
several caches from the Three Sisters Wilderness. "It's certainly a
growing concern," he said.
Other agencies are more open to geocaching, embracing it as a way to
bring more visitors to their parks or forests, said Heidi Roth,
spokeswoman for Groundspeak, the Web site's creator that is based in
Bellevue, Wash.
In Wisconsin, for instance, two members of the state geocaching group
review all permits to put caches on state lands, Roth said. Cachers
there and elsewhere also work with land managers to hold "cache in,
trash out" trips so that geocachers can pick up trash from a site.
Still other agencies barely have heard of the sport.
"It hasn't even hit our radar," said Karen Loper, spokeswoman for the
Portland Bureau of Parks & Recreation. More than 2,200 caches are
hidden within 100 miles of Portland, including one that takes cache
hunters on a tour of the city's fountains.
Getting permission
The bottom line, said Marcia Keener, a National Park Service program
analyst in Washington, D.C., is that anyone who wants to place a cache
on public lands should first ask permission from the relevant agency.
"The underlying problem is that we are not historically comfortable in
dealing with anonymous people doing activities in the parks," said
Keener, who works with geocachers for the park service.
"If no one consults us, that really ticks the land managers off to a
certain extent," she said. "They're not particularly happy about that."
Bend's Badlands are popular with hikers, birders, equestrians and
off-highway vehicle users. An ongoing debate over designating the area
as wilderness has brought even more attention, and therefore more
people, to the once-obscure desert area.
Supporters of the wilderness designation released a poll of Deschutes
County voters Thursday that showed 69 percent favor the wilderness and
19 percent oppose it.
A mix of users
Juggling all the different Badlands users is hard enough, said Currie,
the BLM recreation planner. And geocachers represent another ball to
keep in the air.
"Over the next 10 to 15 years, we're going to have high levels of use
of all kinds in the Badlands," he said. "And the concern was the high
number of geocache sites in the Badlands, because it's so close to
Bend, would basically encourage off-trail use."
Central Oregon geocachers contend the BLM is overestimating the
potential for damage. They estimate that people visit each cache in the
Badlands about twice a month, far too little use to cause damage.
In a protest letter mailed to the BLM last week, Speik said the agency
failed to take that into consideration in its Badlands management plan.
On Speik's recent geocaching foray, he and his companions were careful
to try to leave no trace, but off-trail footprints from them and
previous cache hunters were clearly visible leading to the box hidden
in the lava rock.
Geocachers appreciate the natural world, Speik said, and he noted that
whoever placed this cache wanted people to see the view and appreciate
the land they passed through.
"He brought us to this viewpoint," he said. "The purpose of this cache is this place."
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- Land management 
