Introduction
Many geocachers are eager to place their own geocaches for others to find. To ensure geocaching can be played for years to come, guidelines have been set up to ensure needs and rights of geocachers, land managers and the environment are balanced.
Before a geocache is published, Groundspeak volunteer reviewers will check the geocache against the guidelines. Volunteer reviewers are geocachers as well, and volunteer their time to support the game and the community.
Groundspeak Guidelines
Groundspeak has set up a number of general guidelines to ensure a balance is struck between the interests and needs of geocachers, land managers and the environment. These guidelines form the basis for the review and approval of new geocaches and events by our Groundspeak Volunteer Reviewers.
In addition to the generic guidelines, Groundspeak has also published additional guidelines for specific countries, including additional guidelines for Australia and the different states and territories of Australia. The Groundspeak Volunteer Reviewers will also take the applicable local guidelines into their assessment when reviewing new geocachers and events.
NSW National Park and Wildife Service
One of the reasons for the founding of Geocaching NSW was to negotiate with NSW National Park and Wildlife Services (NPWS) about the placement of caches inside National Parks in NSW. More about the history and the early days of GCNSW can be read on the About Us page.
For geocachers it is important to know if their intended placement of a cache is inside one of the national parks of NPWS. This placement will come with additional restrictions as can be found on the wiki pages of Groundspeak and the policy as published on the NSW Department of Planning and Environment.
To check if the intended placement of a geocache is inside or outside of the boundaries of a National Park, you can download the following overlay file that can be loaded in Google Earth: NSWNationalParksandWildlifeServiceEstate.zip
Geocaching NSW Code of Conduct
Geocaching NSW has also set up a Code of Conduct which has been based on the geocreed. In summary the code of conduct is as follows:
As a geocacher I will….
- Not endanger myself or others
- Observe all laws and rules of the area
- Respect property rights and seek permission where appropriate
- Avoid causing disruptions or public alarm
- Minimise my, and others’, impact on the environment
- Be considerate of others
- Protect the integrity of the game piece.
More details for each of these pledges can be found on our Code of Conduct page.