Metal Detecting in New York

1. The rule, in full

New York – 9 NYCRR 372.7 and 375.1

Operative text, 9 NYCRR 372.7 (activities requiring a permit):

"The use or operation of a metal detector or other mechanical device to locate buried or concealed metal. Permits shall be granted for use of metal detectors in designated areas only."

Scope, 9 NYCRR 375.1:

"…property under the jurisdiction, custody and control of the office."

"The office" is the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. 372.7 applies to "any lands under the jurisdiction of the office".

Determination: state park land only. Does NOT reach municipal parks.

Detecting is permitted on OPRHP land by permit, in designated mapped areas only, issued regionally or by individual park.

Note for the city data, not the state table: New York City runs its own separate metal detector permit through NYC Parks. That is a municipal rule and belongs on the city row, not here.

The second instrument: DEC Fish and Wildlife land, 6 NYCRR 51.8(f)1

Read from the Department of Environmental Conservation's own adoption document, "6 NYCRR Part 51: Public Use of Wildlife Management Areas", express terms, effective 1 January 2022 (dec.ny.gov, parsed locally). Checked 3 Oct

• Why that document and not a consolidated code is set out below. Added 3 Oct 2026 during the forestry and wildlife sweep. New York runs its state parks through one agency and its wildlife land through another, and this entry had only the first. Operative text, 51.8(f)1:

"No person shall use or possess a metal detector afield, except under written permit from the Department. Licensed surveyors using a metal detector to locate survey markers shall not be prohibited."

Scope, 51.0(a):

"Except as otherwise provided, the provisions of this Part shall apply to all persons entering upon or using State lands under the Department's jurisdiction that are administered by the Division of Fish and Wildlife, including but not limited to wildlife management areas, fish and wildlife management areas, and the following unique areas and multiple use areas: Bog Brook Unique Area, Seward's Island Unique Area, Junius Ponds Unique Area, Harwood Lake Multiple Use Area, and Carlton Hill Multiple Use Area."

Determination: DEC Division of Fish and Wildlife land. It prohibits possession, not only use. That is unusual and it is the part to get right. On OPRHP park land the permit is for using a detector in designated areas. On DEC Fish and Wildlife land, carrying one "afield" without a written permit from the Department is itself prohibited, whether or not it is switched on. The one express carve-out is for licensed surveyors locating survey markers.

The two New York answers therefore differ in kind, not just in degree, and they come from two different agencies. Nothing in 9 NYCRR bears on DEC land and nothing in 6 NYCRR bears on OPRHP land.

Why this is cited to an adoption document. DEC states that its online regulations "reflect changes only through December 31, 2021", and that the WestlawNext compilation it publishes is titled Unofficial and is "not certified copies of the regulations and therefore should not be relied upon for legal interpretation". Part 51 took effect 1 January 2022 – the day after that cutoff. So no consolidated version available online carries this provision at all.

That makes this the exception recorded under METHODOLOGY rule 11, not a breach of it. The rule exists to stop a mirror being cited where the authoritative text is available. Here the choice is not between a mirror and the code, it is between the agency's own adoption document and nothing. The adoption document is the authoritative text; it simply has not been consolidated yet.

Two checks were run before relying on it. DEC's proposed, emergency and recently adopted listings carry no Part 51 item in the last twelve months, so the 1 January 2022 text is current. And the official source, if certainty is needed, is the written NYCRR published by the Department of State, which is not online. Read that before quoting this provision anywhere it has to be relied upon – the same caveat this project already carries on Vermont's statutes.

The park rule above still needs re-reading, and this entry says so. 9 NYCRR 372.7 and 375.1 were read from law.cornell.edu, a mirror, on 19 Sep 2026, and the index recorded the basis as "Consolidated code", which was wrong. The quotations have not been shown to be inaccurate; they have simply not been checked against an authoritative text, and New York makes that harder than most states for the reason just given. Queued.

Sources: dec.ny.gov p51expressterms.pdf (effective 1/1/2022), parsed locally, and dec.ny.gov regulations and recently-adopted pages, all read 3 Oct 2026. The park-rule sections 9 NYCRR 372.7 and 375.1 were read from law.cornell.edu on 19 Sep 2026 and are flagged above as mirror-sourced.

What was read for the land-class sweep, and what was not. Read: 6 NYCRR Part 51 in full. Not read: 6 NYCRR Parts 190 to 199, which govern state forests and the forest preserve. The finding above therefore covers what was read and nothing beyond it – see sweep/README.md, "A KNOWN LIMIT OF THIS SWEEP", on why a chapter set aside on its title is an unread chapter.

2. Cities in New York that publish a rule

1 city in New York publishes a rule we can quote, out of 124 checked.

Of the 124 checked, 64 had pages on the city’s own site that we found and read. For the other 60 we could not locate a municipal source, so nothing is claimed about them either way.

3. County rules

County rules exist in New York, and they govern county land only. 7 county rules surfaced while checking cities in this state. Each was read and then set aside, because a county park rule does not answer whether a city park allows detecting, and it is not the state rule either. They are listed because their existence is the useful fact: if you are in a county park, a separate rule probably applies to you.

3 of these 7 name their county in the text that was read; the rest name only “county park” or “county parks”, so the source is given instead of a county name. A county is never inferred from a web address.

4. Cities checked - no published rule

123 cities in New York were checked and have no published rule on this page. Of those, 116 returned no rule, and 7 did return something that has not been published – mostly rules that turned out to govern county land, which are in the county section above. A city here is not a city where detecting is allowed. It is a city whose own published material did not answer the question.

All 123 were checked on 13 September 2026, in one sweep, so that date applies to every row. 6 have no municipal site recorded and are shown without a link rather than dropped, because dropping them would understate what was checked.

5. Land this page does not cover

This page answers for New York state land, and for city and county land where the state rule reaches it. Several other kinds of ground are not covered here, and naming them is more honest than letting a reader assume the page is complete.

Tribal land. This directory does not cover it, and will not.

There are 574 federally recognised tribal nations. Each is a sovereign jurisdiction with its own law, its own permitting, its own enforcement and its own cultural-resource provisions, and none of them is answered by a state's code or by any federal rule quoted on these pages. A one-line instruction to "get tribal permission" would be worse than this paragraph, because it implies one process and one authority where there are 574. If you are on or near tribal land, the governing law is that nation's, and the place to ask is that nation's own offices. Nothing on this page applies there.

BLM land is covered, partly, in its own place. The Bureau of Land Management holds about 245 million acres and the federal rule names metal detectors and permits them, which is the opposite of the national park rule. See BLM land: the detector is named, and permitted. That page covers the base regulation; it does not yet cover the supplementary rules individual BLM State Directors issue for particular field offices.

Named and not examined. These are recorded so their absence is visible rather than silent. No claim is made about any of them:

• Military withdrawn land, including ranges and training areas.
• Bureau of Reclamation land, which surrounds a great many reservoirs.
• Water district and irrigation district land.
• Wilderness, Wilderness Study Areas and National Conservation Areas, which carry designations of their own. And one general point about signs. The commonest piece of reasoning in this subject is "there was no sign, so it was allowed." Arizona's State Land Department answers it in writing, in condition 2 of its own Recreational Permit terms:

"You will comply with all laws, rules, regulations and ordinances. Posting is not required for these provisions to be enforceable."

That is Arizona's sentence about Arizona's provisions and this directory does not present it as the law of any other state. But the proposition it states is the one to carry: nothing read for this project makes a published rule's enforceability depend on a sign at the boundary. Where posting does matter, a specific provision says so, and that provision is quoted on the page where it occurs.