San Diego National Wildlife Refuge Planning Event Event Cache

Time: 10:00 a.m.
Location: Whispering Ridge HOA Clubroom (Location subject to change)

This is a calling of all Geocachers interested in the future of Geocaching in the following areas:

• Sweetwater River (Rancho San Diego/Puzzle Valley)
• McGinty Mountain
• San Miguel Mountain/Proctor Valley
• Los Montanas
• Otay Lakes

The US Fish and Wildlife Service has acquired vast parts of these areas to be included in the San Diego National Wildlife Refuge and is in the process of adopting a Comprehensive Conservation Plan to regulate the allowed uses in these areas. Several of our geocaching community have attended some preliminary planning meetings and we have been encouraged to submit written comments regarding geocaching as an allowed use in these areas.

The purpose of this event is as follows:

• To develop a detailed written proposal to allow geocaching in the San Diego National Wildlife Refuge;
• To obtain input from all interested parties in the form and content of such written proposal;
• To have as many geocachers as possible authorize their names to be added in support of the written proposal; and
• To have our usual fun and frivolity while working on this very serious issue.

Don’t be mistaken – this is truly an historic moment. We have a tremendous opportunity to develop guidelines for a huge area of trails in San Diego County. If we do nothing, it is likely that current Wildlife Refuge guidelines will prevail and geocaching will be prohibited in this vast network of incredible trails. That could result in the archival of hundreds of existing caches and the prohibition of any future caches in these areas.

After speaking with the Rangers in charge of this project, they are all receptive to geocaching and will likely respond very favorably to a detailed and well presented proposal. I (FlagMan) will take the laboring oar on drafting this document, but I certainly welcome all the input I can get from anyone and everyone out there.

OUR DEADLINE FOR SUBMITTAL IS MARCH 24, 2008.

At the February 23, 2008 planning meeting, I picked up all the materials that describe the planning process as well as the various alternatives being considered for this land. These documents are our template for providing comments. Please send me an e-mail if you would like to be on the distribution list for this topic. I will send you pdf’s of the entire package and all other information as it becomes available. Feel free to send me your ideas on what you would like to see included in our proposal. As soon as I have an outline of the proposal I will send it out to everyone on the distribution list. Feel free to make comments back to me by e-mail or by posting to this cache page. On the day of the event we will go over all comments and, hopefully, come to some consensus on a final (or close to final) version of the document.

Thank you all in advance for your support.