geocaching on urban woodlands case studies from munich …...geocaching on urban woodlands – case...

Technische Universität München

Geocaching on Urban

Woodlands – Case

studies from Munich and

Würzburg (Germany)

Gerd Lupp1*, Martina Brockard1, Markus

Melber2, Valerie Kantelberg³, Stephan Pauleit1

1 Chair for Strategic Landscape Management and Planning,

TU-München, Emil-Ramann-Str. 6, 85354 Freising 2 University of Greifswald, Applied Zoology and Nature

Conservation Research Group, Johann-Sebastian-Bach-

Str. 11/12, 17489 Greifswald, Germany 3 Bavarian State Institute of Forestry, 85354 Freising


What is Geocaching?

• Rather young outdoor recreation game starting in 2000 in the US using the internet and

a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or a mobile device to seek small waterproof

containers called “(geo)cache”, that have been hidden by single players of this game –

so-called “owners”, Geocaches can also have multiple ”stages” (the so-called “multi-

cache”), in these cases, the first geocache leads to the next

• Containers contain logbook, that you sign when you found it

• Larger caches may contain “treasures”, items of modest monetary value for trading and

exchanging among the cachers

• Coordinates of the hidden caches are posted on the internet such as

www.geocaching.com

Photos: Brockard

http://www.geocaching.com/


What is Geocaching?

• There are also items that are supposed to move from cache to cache to reach a certain

place, so-called “Travelbugs” or “Travelcoins”. Their moves are also logged and can be

followed online, including pictures taken with the item from the surroundings of the log

Travel Bug

Swedish

Elephant: wants

to get to Africa to

meet a real

elephant there

Travelcoin:

Yellow Duck, see

as much waters

as possible


How many Geocachers and Geocaches?

Germany 2014:

• 343,000 active

Geocachers were

registered on the

most popular

geocaching.com

platform, 327,000

caches hidden in

Germany, a

cache is always

nearby

• ~ 25 caches

within 2 km of this

conference

venue!


Geocaching: Negative impacts on urban woodlands?

Qualitative interviews with foresters of urban woodlands (Käufer 2015):

• Foresters often had no idea about this activity before hunters complained

about persons sneaking around in the forest at unusual times behaving in a

strange manner, disturbance of wildlife and hunting

Also da hab i des erste Mal eigentlich davon erfahren, weil mich a Jäger angesprochen hat, dass des a Frechheit ist … und die rennen da

mit die Taschenlampen rum und ich hab no gar ned gewusst, was des überhaupt's ist - „Geocatching“[sic]. Und hab dann mal im Internet

nachgeschaut und hab eben festgestellt, hoppala, die ham bei uns (…) im Wald so an Pfad angelegt …

So, the first time I heard about it, when a hunter told me, that it is a damned cheek … they run around

with torches and I didn´t know, what “Geocatching” is all about – Then I looked it up in the internet and

found out, oops, they have constructed a kind of trail in our forest… (Forester managing a community

forest in Munich)

• Use and frequentation is not really detectible for foresters but they perceive no rush

• State some interference with game and hunting, but high disturbance in urban areas

anyway

• All interviewed foresters considered Geocaching unproblematic, perceived it positive

and assumed Geocachers being nature lovers and aware of conservation issues


Study area in Munich – Forstenrieder Park & Forst Kasten

~ 60

geocaches in

2014, 21 of

them were

assessed

Smaragdpfad


How many Geocachers are in the forest?

• In two interview series in Munich (Korny & Weitmann 2014, Hirschbeck & Ritter

2014): one out of 300 interviewee states Geocaching as one of the leisure

activity carried out also game rule: Don´t tell it to “muggels”!

• Assessment by number of sucessful logs in the logbook, 21 of the 60 caches

were assessed

• Around 0.2 to 0.5 visits a day in average

• Example: Smaragdpfad Emerald Trail in Forstenrieder Park


Potential Impacts of Geocaching

• Set of criteria was developed to assess potential impacts of Geocaching

• Weighting of the different criteria (e.g. 3 times for conservation issues)

• On site assessment of the different caches: Example Smaragdpfad

(Emerald Trail), simplified Photos: Brockard


Criteria Indicator Assessment Example Cache

“Smaragdpfad” (Esmerald

Trail)

Overall disturbance

caused by geocachers

Number of logs since 2010 Assessing number of logs Around 90 per year, low frequentation

compared to other selected caches

Duration searching for the cache Assessing logs seeking for log

descriptions such as “took a long time

to find”, “quick” etc.

Time needed to find cache on-site when

visiting cache

“long” duration to find cache compared

to others

Distance away from official trails Distance between cache and official

trail

52 m away from official trail

Impact on biodiversity A protected area has to be

crossed away from an official trail

to log the cache

Maps indicating protected areas by law

such as Natura 2000

On-site evaluation of cache

No

Traces of Trampling On-site evaluation, width and length of

informal dirt trails leading to the caches

36 m of visible dirt trail to cache,

approx. 25 cm wide

Vegetation losses at hides On-site evaluation in the surroundings

of the cache

Slight damage of moss-vegetation in

surroundings

Interference with resting places

for bats and birds and potential

flight distances (<50 m, < 10 m)

On-site evaluation if habitat structures

like deadwood trees, trees with cavities,

loose bark or nesting boxes could be

found/distance to caches or informal dirt

trails to access the caches

Bat resting box in 10 m distance to

informal cache trail, cache is hidden in

tree- stump, 20 m away from forest

structures favorable for some bat

species

Interference with wildlife

and its management

Resting places of game On-site evaluation if traces are found Trail is 7 m away from a wild boar

wallow

Feeding places and hunting

facilities

On-site evaluation if facilities are closer

than 50 m

Raised hide visible

Disturbance of other

recreationists

Distance to frequented places On-site evaluation and distance

Duration of search (see also overall

disturbance)

Cache hide is not visible from official

trail


Evaluation

• Most examined caches in Forstenrieder Park are unproblematic

• Smaragdpfad /Emerald Trail is worst in comparison, medium ranking

• In General: Very little information about nature conservation issues in the

cache descriptions

• Critical points of Smaragdpfad:

– Cacher trail passes bat resting box in 10 m distance

– Habitat structures favorable for bats close by

– close to hunting facilities and passes a wild boar wallow

– Some trampling and vegetation losses visible around the stump where the

cache is hidden and a dirt track developed on 50 m stretch, approx 25 cm wide.

• Many geocaches are unproblematic, but there are also bad

examples Guttenberger Wald in Würzburg


Geocaching – Case study Guttenberger Wald

• 4 km southwest of Würzburg´s city center

• Managed deciduous forest dominated by

Beech (Fagus sylvatica) and Oak (Quercus

robur) with an age of mostly 80-130 years.

• Prime bat habitat, protected as a Natura 2000

site

• Deadwood provides shelter and roosts for a

large variety of animal and plant species,

especially bats

• A series of nine so-called climbing caches

with a terrain rating of 5 out of 5 was detected

on the Geocaching.com platform, they were

placed within a detected home range of

Bechstein Bats (Myotis bechsteinii)



Bat conservationists

detected unmistakable

traces of Geocaching in the

bat colony home range

• Ripped off branches

• Footprints/trampling on the

ground

• Geocaching containers

• All nine caches had been

logged 0.64 times per day

on average within 35 days

after being published (~

twice as many visitations

compared to the caches in

Forstenried)

Photos: Melber



• Difficult to address owners (owner of the cache did not reply to bat

conservationists)

• Forest authorities were contacted and they asked the owner to withdraw the

caches, it took 14 days to withdraw the caches from the Geocaching platform

Although so-called reviewers permit caches to be listed in the internet, this

system has a number of lacks

• Reviewers are volunteers and laypersons with limited knowledge on

conservation issues

• Mainly focus on not too many caches in one place

• Although requested, caches are placed without contacting land owner and

forest authorities complains on Geocaching platform when caches are

destroyed accidentally e.g. by forest management and logging: “Foresters

behave like an axe in the forest”


Geocaching – Lessons for Forest Management

• Active Information about geocaches (basic membership is free, authorities

get premium access for free)

• Contacts with the owners and reviewers, communicate actively, get to

know where the caches are, consider them when forest management

activities are planned

• Most geocaches are less problematic

• Geocachers consider themselves being nature lovers, though there is little

knowledge

• Geocachers often have so-called CITO (Cache in – trash out) events

chances to get in contact

• Geocaching can be used for communication and rising awareness for

conservation/management issues e.g. multi-cache to explore a forest and

guide visitors around sensitive places if a cache exists, there is no place

for another Observe rules for caches, they should not be related to any

political, religious and commercial interests


Thank you!

Dr. Gerd Lupp

„Urban Forests 2050“

Chair for Strategic

Landscape Planning and

Management

Emil-Ramann-Str. 6

DE-85354 Freising

Tel: +49(0)8161-71-4661

[email protected]

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