Is it legal to climb in National forests or parks? Do you have to obtain permits? just curios if anyone has any idea.

According to a Ranger I talked to it is legal as long as you do no harm to the trees. They allow many kinds of deer hunting tree stands that damage trees, so I assume anything a tree climber would do should be considered safe. Stupid question here... you dont climb with spikes... correct? My guess is not, so you should be fine, no permits or verbal permission required from what I was told.

Edit: this was in regards to National Forest. National Parks may be different. We dont have any National Parks around these parts of Wisconsin. I checked into our state parks and they gave me the all clear as long as you dont damage the trees.

Climbing permits are required for the redwood national parks and are for research climbers. It may be that permits are required for any national park. My understanding is that for national forests it is permitted but there may be local rules per national forest depending on the sensitivity of the habitat.
-moss

I checked into our state parks and they gave me the all clear as long as you dont damage the trees.

That is unusual that they gave an "ALL CLEAR". From reading some of the many previous posts over the years, Gov Officials are generally reluctant to approve anything without first checking and getting "written" approvals (preferable) all the way up their chain of command that is mostly impossible to get any bureaucracy to do.
You are lucky and take the opportunity to educate those friendly officials about the benefits of Recreational Technical Tree Climbing in their areas.

I was actually very very supprised that they said that. This paticular state park has a reputation of being very strick and closed minded regarding just about anything. This park has a ton of rock climbers that go and use the many rock walls, so that might make the park rangers more open to tree climbing. When I was talking to the ranger about it the first thing out his mouth was "Why whould you want to climb a tree?" But after a few quick questions, he was convinced that it would be fine. We are lucky because there are some beautiful trees with some great views.