Parks Canada is worried that a new high-tech game called geocaching could be harming the environment.

Geocaching is a game that involves a person or group hiding a small item somewhere outside, and then posting the global positioning system (GPS) coordinates of the location on the web.

GPS is an electronic system based on satellites that provides coordinates for any point on the Earth's surface within a couple of metres.

With the coordinates and a GPS system, available from about $100 US, a geocache player heads for the hidden cache. Typically a logbook accompanies the hidden item so people who find the cache can record their success. If the geocache hunters take the treasure, they should leave something else in its place for the next person.

"It is deceptively easy," geocaching.com says. "It's one thing to see where an item is, it's a totally different story to actually get there."

Caches are hidden all over the world, from sites accessible only with scuba gear to urban buildings to forests, the website says.

Parks Canada temporarily banned physical geocaches earlier this year, because people hunting items in off-trail locations could interfere with wildlife.

It is consulting with geocachers to develop a permanent policy in 2006, the Parks Canada website says.

Geocaching is so popular, it is now developing its own vocabulary. A "hitchhiker," for example, is an item which when found, is supposed to be moved to a new cache. Geocaching.com says there is a candle that travelled to Arizona from Australia, "and a Mr. Potato Head that leaps from cache to cache."

A hitchhiker is created by attaching a note to a cached item, asking the finder to move it to a new cache.