I have offered to arrange a CITO or a tree plant event, its a no go at this time.

Lawrence, if this is the offer you made to me then that was as negotiations were ongoing and the offer may have confused matters.

If you want to organise something like this now with your local ranger then go ahead. It can't do any harm and may even do some good.

If it's your local ranger that has said no then that is disappointing

I spoke to Dave about this and he said not to do this myself but he would speak with them.
I think that if we arrange something with the local ranger and the powers that be found out it could look like we are going behind their backs.

I may as well put in my tuppence worth. I was walking in Drum Manor Forest Park at the weekend and noticed several ropes hanging from branches. I thought at the time that the forestry must have no issue with kids swinging several feet above hard ground on an improvised swing and yet they have a problem with caching. Doesnt make a lot of sense.

Ok. I get you now. There have been so many emails and messages back and forward on this with so many people that I'm getting confused

I'll contact Dave and see what he feels about how this would go down with HO


Nor people rallying through forests and dumping burned out cars

I guess the issue here is that they are aware of geocaching and once they are aware of an activity then legal liability comes into question. If you reported those swings then they would be obliged to do something about it. It's a mad world really and although I don't agree with their stance I can also understand where they are coming from

I do wish the FSNI could come to a decision - I've had a real 'special' all set to go in Castlewellan Forest Park sitting in my workshop for the past year

OK, just wanting clarification on something - is it OK to have stages of a multi where the final is outside the FSNI property or will that still fall foul of their Insurance issues?

By the way, is the current reviewer aware of these restrictions as caches are still appearing on FSNI property.... and one in particular (GC2BPGT) had little chance of passing through any Government bureaucracy to obtain permission in the time between placement and publishing!

If the stages inside the forestry boundary are virtual stages (ie no physical containers and using information already present) then you should be okay. However, if you approach the forestry manager and he gives permission then you are free to place a physical cache within the forest. You just need to be able to demonstrate that at the time of review.

Re: GC2BPGT. erik is aware of the FSNI restrictions but bear in mind he isn't local, he covers many different reviewing territories (including Korea, Japan and some other Far East countries) and is more prone to make a mistake than a local reviewer. God knows I made plenty of mistakes and I only had Ireland to think about! If you have concerns then you should contact erik via his profile or else the CO. It could be that the CO did get permission or that he didn't know it was required and erik missed it.

I'm not concerned by it at all - although the incident that it is named after wouldn't help relations with the FSNI if they connected it to Geocaching but that's a whole other story I suspect! I was aware that Erik wasn't a local and it wouldn't surprise me in the least that things like this would get overlooked - just don't want it to lead to complications for the negotiations with the FSNI if they become aware of caches still being listed on "their" land. In my opinion they should get their bureaucratic noses out of it but unfortunately that isn't the world we seem to live in any more!

I know I could go and ask the Ranger for permission but with the negotiations ongoing I'm just going to let it lie or do something with a virtual multicache sticking to paths. If the situation improves in the future it wouldn't be hard to add proper caches - forests tend to be big after all!