AR Game and Fish and AR Natural Heritage Commissions
I contacted the local ArGFC here in Lonoke because I wanted to put a cache at the Joe Hogan Fish Hatchery and they also sent me to a "name" in Little Rock (I'm referring to HarleyHogs post in the post about the newspaper articles that Arkansas Stickerdude started. See bottom of this post for what he said). That person had heard of Geocaching and said they knew what it was and what the Arkansas Parks Department had agreed to. They had discussed it with their attorneys and were in the stages of drawing up procedures for geocaching in Arkansas, BUT only ArGFC employees would be allowed to place/own a cache on their properties. Now that is just what he told me. I can't find where I put his number or his name but if I find it I will post it so you can see what who I talked to. This was about a month ago now.
http://www.agfc.com/education/geocaching.html
I also am trying to make contact with the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission and have been given a contact (Doug Fletcher) with them by a friend (Tom Foti) that works ANHC, but he (Doug) has not returned my phone call yet. Tom told me that at the moment they were not happy with Geocaching because they have found some caches that were placed on their properties without permission and the area around the cache had been damaged. I explained it in greater detail to Tom and told him what the State Parks allow and he felt the ANHC might go for a permitted system like that, if it gets explained to them.
http://www.naturalheritage.org/
Quote:
Originally Posted by Harleyhogs
I guess you have had better luck with the Ark Game and Fish Commission than I have.
I was going to set out a cache on a G/F River Access area, so I called the local G/F Biologist Office to obtain approval for the cache. They had no idea what I was talking about. They referred me to Little Rock.
Before calling I went to the GF website. Wow there was a article about Geocaching :lol: . Well I called and I went thru 3 different people to find one that had heard of Geocaching. Well to make a long story short someone took my phone number and would have someone call me back. That has been over a month ago. You would think that if the G/F had a web page dealing with Geocaching that their people would be a little better informed.
I guess what my main point is we need to education the people about the positive aspects of Geocaching as a sport / hobby. We need to inform individuals that this is not only an individual sport / hobby, that caching can also be done as a family or group event. 8O