Parks Canada Draft Policy

ertyu · Senior Member

Parks Canada Draft Policy

dutch53 · Veteran Member

I took a quick read through the draft at lunchtime and found it interesting reading. It is obvious that a lot of thought has gone into the policy and has been put together by people in that are fimilar with geocaching. I think that the proposed process for placing caches will keep most people from placing caches but in my mind that is OK. I think it is a good compromise and better than not being able to place any caches at all. I will read again to night and then post my opinion.

Lizardo · Senior Member

This is good. We should probably prepare ourselves for the same type of policy being adopted by the Provincial parks eventually. Existing caches will likely be grandfathered in and new caches will need to be approved by parks staff. I hope the parks officers are somewhat lenient in their definition of what a trail is, though. :)

Dragonfreys · Senior Member

Well I understand that the geocaching policy was presented to Executive Board last week and was well received. There is even talk of promoting the activity nationally so it sounds fairly positive.

Anyone hear anything on the provincial front lately with their policy work?

Kabuthunk · Veteran Member

dutch53 wrote:

It is obvious that a lot of thought has gone into the policy and has been put together by people in that are fimilar with geocaching. I think that the proposed process for placing caches will keep most people from placing caches but in my mind that is OK. I think it is a good compromise and better than not being able to place any caches at all. I will read again to night and then post my opinion.

Umm... maybe I'm reading something entirely wrong or something, but this is what I'm seeing here:

* Virtual caches are to be located on official trails and in other publicly accessible areas, and must have educational messages related to the park/site associated with them. Parks Canada staff will assist with the development of educational messages for virtual caches.
* A moratorium has been placed on new physical caches. Existing physical caches will be removed, as will the website postings of physical caches. Web material will be archived through cooperation with website administrators2.
* Physical geocaching is now posted as a prohibited activity in all Parks Canada-administered protected heritage areas, in order to provide a regulatory and compliance mechanism for managing the activity.

What I'm reading from this is that all geocaches located in parks will be permanantly removed. That's about it. Virtual caches don't exist on geocaching any more, so essentially they're forcing anything Parks Canada covers to be listed as a virtual cache on waymarking.com.

So yeah... not sure where you're finding this "existing caches will likely be grandfathered in" thing, but if this policy is put on provincial parks as well... wouldn't they remove all caches currently there? Also... with the moratorium put on all new caches currently there... that's telling me that they're suspending anyone from even trying to look for the ones that they didn't remove yet.

So....... not sure how anyone who's ever geocached could possibly see this as being good. After reading it over, the long and short of it that I'm seeing is "Geocaching is banned... and virtuals (that must be listed on waymarking.com) are only allowed if you spamvertise the park".

I can see the "keep it on trails" thing, but I get the uncanny feeling their definition of a trail is those massive, wide paths with chipped wood or gravel on them.

EDIT: Heh... looked at the title of that geocaching policy page.... "Development of a Final Policy on Geocaching". Yeah... the final policy? "Get lost, you're all banned".

Yah, don't mind me... it's been a rough month, and seeing this isn't filling me with heaping spoonfuls of happiness.

-- Edited by Kabuthunk at 10:30, 2006-11-30

ertyu · Senior Member

Parks Canada currently bans caches from their parks.

This policy is a reasonable method to allow them again. Yes, virtuals are gone, but you can have virtual stages to a multi for example.

Kabuthunk · Veteran Member

Eh, that's more of a puzzle cache, since you'd have to obtain numbers or something from the locations... not a mini-cache or something with coordinates to the next part written on it.

Dragonfreys · Senior Member

Kabuthunk wrote:

EDIT: Heh... looked at the title of that geocaching policy page.... "Development of a Final Policy on Geocaching". Yeah... the final policy? "Get lost, you're all banned".

Ah, just for clarification, you seem to be looking at the interim guidelines that don't allow physical caches. The final draft policy will allow physical caches but not trading items (wildlife concerns with smelly stuff) so it will be a container, logbook and writing stuff.

With recent statistics showing that park visitors are getting older and not coming anymore, youth are too plugged into their electronics to go outside and most new Canadians have little cultural attachment to wilderness, Parks Canada may sing a very different tune in the next little while. Most visitation is on a downswing.

Geocaching may actually be promoted nationally by Parks Canada as a way to reach the technologically enthralled masses and entice them into parks. Without public support parks will quickly evaporate.

Kabuthunk · Veteran Member

Dragonfreys wrote:

Ah, just for clarification, you seem to be looking at the interim guidelines that don't allow physical caches. The final draft policy will allow physical caches but not trading items (wildlife concerns with smelly stuff) so it will be a container, logbook and writing stuff.

Whoops... stupid Linux. It made it look like the .pdf file (why oh why does everything like to use the god-forsaken pdf format) look like it only had one page... hence, when I clicked on the link, all I could see was the comment form for some reason... so all I could go off of was what I found on the actual parks canada webpage.

Am currently skimming the actual policy.

Thoughts as I go along:

1. No trade items - eh, I'm fine with that
2. Must contain educational content - Umm... that seems kinda odd. I suppose we can toss in some crap about what type of trees are there, I dunno. Or how about "May snow in the winter at this location". That's educational, right? :P But no... they toss me a sheet of paper with something 'educational', I'll toss it in beside the stash-note. This is of course provided I hide something that falls under this policy... which I can easily see happening over time.
3. They don't seem to understand the concept of a multicache. Typically... for most any multicache I've seen, there's a small container or mini plaque containing the coordinates or something. It's not like there's absolutely nothing at the mid-points. If you have to decipher the next coords from something already there, that's a puzzle cache (in my opinion).
4. Not allowed to leave the set path? That, combined with no trade items = I smell a whooooooole ton of micros. Micros in a forest. *sigh*.
5. Only metal containers. Ok... now THIS is actually a good idea. I just wish however that there was a lot more choices for metal containers in general. I have no clue where anything is other than an ammo can, a waterproof match container *sigh, micros*. Well... at least Altoids containers would be banned since they contained 'food'. Worst. Cache-container. Ever.
6. Man, they are REALLY adamant on that 'no trade items' thing. Yeah, I can see the bears and wildlife clamouring over my chainmail balls. I wonder if we could get 'em to bend towards "only coin or other metallic trade items".
7. Ok, I just found something that'll most likely count me out of ever placing a cache in a park. "Cacher registers the cache with Parks Canada site by providing complete contact information". Yeah, the day I give my name, address, and phone number out to a publicly available location will be the day I'm throwing out that phone and moving. And before you ask, no, my name's not in the phone book. I'm generally paranoid about personal information being easily, readily available online. Things are bad enough as is with the various searching tools stalkers have access to, I don't need to make it easier. If they can live with my name and email address, we'll be in business. It all depends what they mean by "complete contact information".
8. Woah, woah... page 5... under compliance... what's this about "pay applicable user fees"? They'd better not be trying to charge us here.
9. Heh... they say that on the cache note, you have to have information about if someone accidentally finds the cache. Given the rules, I'm guessing this will happen very often to begin with. That goes in all caches regardless... I just found that funny.
10. Log cache condition and environmental condition? I hope they realize that the condition is purely subjective. What's good to one can be horrible to another.

End thoughts: Got some good things in there, some bad things. Probably more good than bad, but it's close. Main annoyance is the having to give them complete contact information (if that wasn't already apparent :P). It'd be nice if we could negotiate with them about coin or metal-related leavings in caches. Then at least there's a chance people could leave some all-metal TB's in them. Although, given they're specifically stating that a pencil, logbook, in a ziplock bag be in there... we should also be able to push that plastic, wood, and well... papery-type products be allowed too. That'd allow pretty much any TB.

LOVE the idea that the cache containers be metal. I mean sure... my first cache is plastic, but I REALLY didn't want it to be. If they could give us an idea where to get sealed metal containers for caches aside from the aformentioned ammo-can and waterproof match-container (and bison-tube I guess), that'd make things a helluva lot easier.

And what's this about fees... they might want to toss in a little more specification in there. And maybe be a little more flexible on the "not allowed to step off the actual path" thing. I mean... at least let us hide something BEHIND a tree for god sakes. Otherwise, we might as well just dangle it from a branch in the middle of the trail.

That, or we just wait about 2-3 years. After visitor levels drop another 50% due to video games and people not wanting to go outside, maybe they'll be slightly more flexible :P

dani_carriere · Senior Member

As one of the participants in the Ottawa Conference to draft the policy, I can tell you that a lot of thought went into each sentence. We had to find a balance between allowing us to geocache within park boundaries, and not impacting the parks by leaving "footprints" (aka a trace that a human had been there). Some parks are quite fragile (Banff, some historic sites), whereas some a less so (Riding Mountain). There is also the concern of impacts to the animal inhabitants of the parks. The policy we came up with was a happy medium for most in attendance. In addition, the only way we could get approval from some of the park people was to say that they had the ability to "opt out". For example, if the staff at Banff find that it is damaging the flora or fauna of the park, they can opt out and not allow ANY caches. All park people agreed that cache containers should only be placed in places that have already had a great deal of human traffic (picnic areas, campgrounds, parking lots). It wasn't easy to show the benefits of geocaching to much of the Park Staff, but like I said, this is a happy middle ground for all in attendance.

dani

dani_carriere · Senior Member

Kabuthunk wrote:

And what's this about fees... they might want to toss in a little more specification in there. And maybe be a little more flexible on the "not allowed to step off the actual path" thing. I mean... at least let us hide something BEHIND a tree for god sakes. Otherwise, we might as well just dangle it from a branch in the middle of the trail.

There are fees to enter most National Parks right now. Those are the fees they're talking about. There is no extra fee.

Also, about registering with the Parks Office is more about making sure that abandoned caches are cleaned up. If they can't contact you, they'll pull the cache.

dutch53 · Veteran Member

Thanks Dani, for the backround info. I will continue to support the idea that caching with restrictions is still better than no caching at all. Anyone who would like place a cache in national site will have to give it some real thought and effort to place it. This will make it a quality cache and that is something that we are all trying to achive.

Dragonfreys · Senior Member

Manitoba