|
|
| |
| Sat, Sep. 6, 2008 |  |
 |
|
||
| |
Game and Fish 'not ready' for geocaching Friday, Nov 17, 2006 By Joe Mosby Arkansas News Correspondent LITTLE ROCK - The state Game and Fish Commission withdrew plans to permit the new game geocaching on agency lands Thursday but approved a third Quail Focal Area project. Geocaching is a treasure hunting game in which participants use Global Positioning Systems and Internet Web sites to find a hidden object. Players have requested permission to make use of the commission's many wildlife management areas, lakes, hatcheries and other facilities in remote corners of the state. The panel had planned to consider a proposal for a permit system for geocache games Thursday but Doyle Shook, the agency's chief of wildlife management, pulled it off the table. "We're just not ready for this," Shook said. The commissioners did approve another wildlife project. Steven Fowler, upland game coordinator for Game and Fish, said the newest Quail Focal Area project is designed for 9,700 acres of private land in the Damascus area of north-central Arkansas. Located where Faulkner, Conway and Van Buren counties meet, the project is also in an area of major activity in the Fayetteville Shale natural gas development. The commissioners approved a commitment of $2,500 to join $50,000 from the U.S. natural Resources Conservation Service and $25,000 Southwestern Energy' SEECO subsidiary. Landowners who join the program would have help in developing habitat favorable to quail at no cost to the landowner. Also Thursday, the commission renamed the agency's Wattensaw Wildlife Management Area near Hazen in honor of Mike Freeze of England, who ended a seven-year term on the commission June 30. The facility is to be called Mike Freeze/Wattensaw Wildlife Management Area. "Wattensaw is a big bow hunting area, and the bow hunters consider Mike Freeze a friend," commission chairman Sheffield Nelson of Little Rock said. |
