I don't know about other places but at least two National Wildlife
Refuges around here have said no to both geocaching and letterboxing.
Nautilus
quarksmom wrote:
> I think we need to clarify our terminology. There are several
> federal land agencies with a variety of purposes.
>
> National Parks are foremost to "preserve" a national treasure -
> sometimes natural & scenic; sometimes historic. In National Parks
> there is no hunting, no oil drilling, no timber cutting. In this
> day & age when environmental issues have very low priority with our
> government most parks are in a sad state. Visitor numbers continue
> to rise but with budget cuts there is less money for maintenance to
> stay nothing of upgrading facilities or even maintaining adequate
> staff.
>
> National Forests run by an entirely different agency, the US Forest
> Service in the Department of Agriculture, are managed for multiple
> use. Such uses include extractive activities such as mining &
> logging, hunting, trapping as well as recreational activities such
> as camping, hiking, wildlife watching, skiing, snowmobiling and so
> forth. In general Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands are managed
> similar to national forests for multiple use. There is also a whole
> other class of federal property - National Wildlife Refuges. They
> often have restrictions to protect the wildlife they are managing
> but also encourage visitors & I plan to place some boxes at several
> refuges in my area this summer.
>
> As with cemetaries it would be possible to encourage people to visit
> national parks to get information that they need to solve the clues
> & then hide the box itself in another nearby location. I know that
> they are in fact geocaches in national parks but they are "virtual"
> caches where the person has to obtain information from a sign &
> relay it to the cache placer to get credit for the find. There is
> no actual box at the location.
>
> Okay I'll get off my soap box now & go back to carving a stamp for
> my wildlife refuge box.
>
> mt walker
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
LBing and Wildlife Refuges
5 messages in this thread |
Started on 2004-03-05
Re: LBing and Wildlife Refuges
From: Chuck and Laura Lubelczyk (naturbuf@gwi.net) |
Date: 2004-03-05 18:13:10 UTC-08:00
Re: [LbNA] Re: LBing and Wildlife Refuges
From: Mike Brooks (qocmike@msn.com) |
Date: 2004-03-06 09:03:59 UTC-05:00
National Wildlife Refuges are stricter than National Parks. They have a bug
up their rear ends for anyone who does anything on their land other than
gawk at wildlife in a federally approved manner. They should be avoided.
The NWR regulations quoted make searching as much a crime as placing, since
a letterbox would be covered by the phrasing "ANY personal property" and
"treasure trove". IMO, that makes posting a false clue (someone suggested
that to annoy NWR and NPS managers) a horrid idea, since not every
letterboxer who might see the false clue will have seen this thread and know
that they were about to commit an act of civil disobedience.
16USC668dd, 50CFR 27.93, Abandonment of Property Abandoning, discarding, or
otherwise leaving any personal property in any national wildlife refuge is
prohibited.
16USC668dd 50CFR 27.63 Search for and removal of other valued objects - (a)
No person shall search for buried treasure, treasure trove, valuable
semi-precious rocks, stones, or mineral specimens on national wildlife
refuges unless authorized by permit or by provision of this subchapter C.
Some geocachers have compiled a list of all known policies (good or bad)
from various park systems. The site is geocachingpolicy.com. From a park
perspective, letterboxing would be covered by the same rules, since both
hobbies involve leaving a container in a park to be hunted. One point of
speculation about this site: Most areas that are unlisted are likely to be
OK since any park system that restricts caching and LBing should have been
discovered and discussed in caching forums by now. That's not a guarantee,
but an educated guess. They do update frequently as rules change.
Happy letterboxing.
Mike
----- Original Message -----
From:
To:
Sent: Friday, March 05, 2004 11:32 PM
Subject: [LbNA] Digest Number 2186
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 17
Date: Fri, 05 Mar 2004 18:13:10 -0800
From: Chuck and Laura Lubelczyk
Subject: Re: LBing and Wildlife Refuges
I don't know about other places but at least two National Wildlife
Refuges around here have said no to both geocaching and letterboxing.
Nautilus
quarksmom wrote:
> ...There is also a whole
> other class of federal property - National Wildlife Refuges. They
> often have restrictions to protect the wildlife they are managing
> but also encourage visitors & I plan to place some boxes at several
> refuges in my area this summer.
>
>
> Okay I'll get off my soap box now & go back to carving a stamp for
> my wildlife refuge box.
>
> mt walker
up their rear ends for anyone who does anything on their land other than
gawk at wildlife in a federally approved manner. They should be avoided.
The NWR regulations quoted make searching as much a crime as placing, since
a letterbox would be covered by the phrasing "ANY personal property" and
"treasure trove". IMO, that makes posting a false clue (someone suggested
that to annoy NWR and NPS managers) a horrid idea, since not every
letterboxer who might see the false clue will have seen this thread and know
that they were about to commit an act of civil disobedience.
16USC668dd, 50CFR 27.93, Abandonment of Property Abandoning, discarding, or
otherwise leaving any personal property in any national wildlife refuge is
prohibited.
16USC668dd 50CFR 27.63 Search for and removal of other valued objects - (a)
No person shall search for buried treasure, treasure trove, valuable
semi-precious rocks, stones, or mineral specimens on national wildlife
refuges unless authorized by permit or by provision of this subchapter C.
Some geocachers have compiled a list of all known policies (good or bad)
from various park systems. The site is geocachingpolicy.com. From a park
perspective, letterboxing would be covered by the same rules, since both
hobbies involve leaving a container in a park to be hunted. One point of
speculation about this site: Most areas that are unlisted are likely to be
OK since any park system that restricts caching and LBing should have been
discovered and discussed in caching forums by now. That's not a guarantee,
but an educated guess. They do update frequently as rules change.
Happy letterboxing.
Mike
----- Original Message -----
From:
To:
Sent: Friday, March 05, 2004 11:32 PM
Subject: [LbNA] Digest Number 2186
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 17
Date: Fri, 05 Mar 2004 18:13:10 -0800
From: Chuck and Laura Lubelczyk
Subject: Re: LBing and Wildlife Refuges
I don't know about other places but at least two National Wildlife
Refuges around here have said no to both geocaching and letterboxing.
Nautilus
quarksmom wrote:
> ...There is also a whole
> other class of federal property - National Wildlife Refuges. They
> often have restrictions to protect the wildlife they are managing
> but also encourage visitors & I plan to place some boxes at several
> refuges in my area this summer.
>
>
> Okay I'll get off my soap box now & go back to carving a stamp for
> my wildlife refuge box.
>
> mt walker
[LbNA] Re: LBing and Wildlife Refuges
From: quarksmom (quarksmom@earthlink.net) |
Date: 2004-03-06 15:12:14 UTC
>The site is geocachingpolicy.com.<
Thanks Mike - the site is a great resource. Interesting that ny
local NWR employee didn't know his own department's policy. I
suppose I should point it out to him
mt walker
Thanks Mike - the site is a great resource. Interesting that ny
local NWR employee didn't know his own department's policy. I
suppose I should point it out to him
mt walker
[LbNA] Re: LBing and Wildlife Refuges
From: rscarpen (RiskyNil@pocketmail.com) |
Date: 2004-03-06 17:24:13 UTC
> The NWR regulations quoted make searching as much a crime as
> placing, since a letterbox would be covered by the phrasing "ANY
> personal property" and "treasure trove".
How does that make searching for a letterbox illegal? I'll grant
that 'treasure trove' isn't defined and letterboxers might consider a
box a 'treasure trove', but others (including the NPS) call it
litter. If I'm a huge collector of candy wrappers and I found a
prime example of a Snicker's wrapper on NWR land--does it make it
illegal for me to pick it up and keep it?
It's a contrived example, but letterboxing doesn't strike me as a
whole lot different. Everyone NOT in this hobby looks at letterboxes
like we look at candy wrappers--trash.
And then looking at their list of stuff people aren't supposed to
search for: "No person shall search for buried treasure, treasure
trove, valuable semi-precious rocks, stones, or mineral specimens on
national wildlife." Notice a recurring theme? All of the items they
refer to have some sort of monetary value. Which letterboxes do not
have.
One other note about the rules: This could be just a 'legal
technicality', but the rule clearly states the 'search for AND
REMOVAL of other valued objects....' If you don't remove it, is it
still illegal? And would the NWR consider a letterbox a 'valued
object'? Sure doesn't sound that way considering they don't want us
putting them out there.
Hiding letterboxes in such locations is clearly illegal, but I
haven't seen anything to suggest that LOOKING for them is illegal,
nor that creating 'imaginary boxes' is illegal.
-- Ryan
> placing, since a letterbox would be covered by the phrasing "ANY
> personal property" and "treasure trove".
How does that make searching for a letterbox illegal? I'll grant
that 'treasure trove' isn't defined and letterboxers might consider a
box a 'treasure trove', but others (including the NPS) call it
litter. If I'm a huge collector of candy wrappers and I found a
prime example of a Snicker's wrapper on NWR land--does it make it
illegal for me to pick it up and keep it?
It's a contrived example, but letterboxing doesn't strike me as a
whole lot different. Everyone NOT in this hobby looks at letterboxes
like we look at candy wrappers--trash.
And then looking at their list of stuff people aren't supposed to
search for: "No person shall search for buried treasure, treasure
trove, valuable semi-precious rocks, stones, or mineral specimens on
national wildlife." Notice a recurring theme? All of the items they
refer to have some sort of monetary value. Which letterboxes do not
have.
One other note about the rules: This could be just a 'legal
technicality', but the rule clearly states the 'search for AND
REMOVAL of other valued objects....' If you don't remove it, is it
still illegal? And would the NWR consider a letterbox a 'valued
object'? Sure doesn't sound that way considering they don't want us
putting them out there.
Hiding letterboxes in such locations is clearly illegal, but I
haven't seen anything to suggest that LOOKING for them is illegal,
nor that creating 'imaginary boxes' is illegal.
-- Ryan
[LbNA] Re: LBing and Wildlife Refuges
From: psycomommy2003 (ktborrelli@hotmail.com) |
Date: 2004-03-06 22:15:07 UTC
I just LOVE those imaginary boxes. Best hunting ever!
P-MOM
--- In letterbox-usa@yahoogroups.com, "rscarpen"
wrote:
> Hiding letterboxes in such locations is clearly illegal, but I
> haven't seen anything to suggest that LOOKING for them is illegal,
> nor that creating 'imaginary boxes' is illegal.
>
> -- Ryan
P-MOM
--- In letterbox-usa@yahoogroups.com, "rscarpen"
wrote:
> Hiding letterboxes in such locations is clearly illegal, but I
> haven't seen anything to suggest that LOOKING for them is illegal,
> nor that creating 'imaginary boxes' is illegal.
>
> -- Ryan