What I am hoping to do is to promote is continued contact between Geocachers and the authorities AND to act as a repository for meeting information from all over the country. Currently, it's tough to find out what sort of luck others are having. Hopefully, this page will make the endeavor easier. Obviously bogus entries will be deleted. DO NOT ABUSE THE LOGGING OF THIS CACHE
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This was our initial meeting with the Forest service in Missouri. It was very informative and helpful.
This will be a chance for Geocachers to discuss growing problems we are having with the Forest Service in our area. As you know, several caches have been confiscated or ordered removed because caches are considered as LITTER by the regulating agencies. Below is the introductory letter from a Forest Service agent. PLEASE TRY TO ATTEND on 2/5/02 7PM at Powder Valley Conservation area. This is important folks.
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Hi, Glenn. I am the Recreation and Wilderness Manager on the Mark Twain National Forest, with an office in Rolla. I have been following some of the Geocaching activities for the past several months, and have some concerns about the growing number of caches on the national forest that we aren't notified about, and in particular, about the ones that have been located in Wilderness. In general, we have tried to be supportive of this activity, as long as caches are placed outside of Wilderness and are placed so that they are not causing environmental damage, (either directly through the placement of the cache, or more commonly indirectly, though trampling by cache seekers). Most of the owners of caches that have caused us concern have been very cooperative, once we contacted them. We did have Law Enforcement remove an ammo box cache because it was suspected (erroneously) of being associated with some drug activity in the area. [NOTE: that was my cache at Greer Spring. gln] I am trying to find ways to encourage geocachers to notify us when they place a cache on us, and to not place caches in the Wilderness. [UPDATE: Due to the efforts of cacher Myotis, caching IS permitted in wilderness area of Missouri!] I consider this to be a legitimate form of recreation that we would like to encourage on the national forest, in appropriate places. We would like to work with the Geocaching community to further this, and to minimize problems. I definitely do NOT want to see problems that would lead to establishment of numerous regulations or permits for geocaches, and we need the help of the geocachers if we are going to be able to avoid that as the sport continues to grow.
John Schumacher suggested that you might be able to help us. Please contact me if you are interested. Thanks.
Nancy Feakes, Recreation Manager Mark Twain National Forest
When I originally set this up years ago I was thinking of a more organized meeting with government folks. Something like park officials, law enforcement, city hall official etc to provide them with some education of what geocaching is and how it works.
I guess if you were stopped by local law officials you would be explaining geocaching on some level to prove you were not some crazy in the woods. :-) Lately, I have been getting more "impromptu law enforcement meetings" and less organized meetings tho.
So, if you got stopped and did some “reasonable amount” of explaining, sure, I think you would be good to log this cache. Obviously a simple "I got stopped by the police" will not do it. This would be an ideal time to do some face to face educating
Thanks for inquiring and thanks for choosing to play at geocaching.com.
Glenn, Missouri, USA
Please be aware that this MAY NOT COUNT toward Souvenirs and Statistics