Greetings, Guys, Interesting article below. I have also heard rumors of midnight regulation to lessen the protection of cave species - therefore the protection of caves. Does anybody have any information on that?
Threats To Cave Species Spark Litigation Nationwide By Jesse Greenspan Law360, New York (October 28, 2008) -- Caves are currently one of the most imperiled habitats in the United States due to such things as groundwater pollution and urban development. But although caves don't contain large, iconic species like the gray wolf or grizzly bear, numerous lawsuits have been filed in an attempt to protect their wildlife, artifacts and mineral formations. This February, for example, two citizens' groups sued the U.S. Federal Highway Administration for proposing to expand U.S. Highway 281 and Loop 1604 over an aquifer recharge zone in central Texas that contains many caves. The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, alleges among other things that the highway expansions would destroy feeding, breeding and sheltering habitat for federally listed cave invertebrates, including pseudoscorpions and beetles. The highway expansions would also alter runoff patterns, disturb the flow of nutrients into the water and facilitate the introduction of fire ants and other invasive species, according to the complaint. Bill Bunch, an attorney and executive director with Save Our Springs Alliance in Austin, Texas, who is representing the plaintiffs in the case, said he is also considering challenging the critical habitat designations for some of those cave species. "Most of these caves are pretty small, but they might have three or four unique species in them," Bunch said. "It's pretty fascinating. It's these little isolated, island habitats." He said that because Texas has almost no land-use control laws, his organization often has to turn to federal laws like the Endangered Species Act when filing a lawsuit. In a separate matter, the Center for Biological Diversity filed a notice of intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other federal agencies this April for failing to take measures against white-nose syndrome, a mysterious disease that is killing off bats in the Northeast. Among other things, the center asked the agencies to close all caves and mines to recreational use where four federally listed bat species are found. Mollie Matteson, a conservation advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity, said that although white-nose syndrome is probably spread by the bats themselves, people entering the caves can cause them stress and perhaps exacerbate the problem. "It seems to me that cave-dwelling habitat and cave-dwelling bats are increasingly threatened," Matteson said. In March, WildEarth Guardians sued the Secretary of the Interior in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for failing to make a preliminary finding on two Endangered Species Act listing petitions that cover 681 species, including about 100 cave species. Jay Tutchton, general counsel for WildEarth Guardians, said these kinds of suits would help protect caves "by protecting the most sensitive residents of the caves." He said that caves are threatened by groundwater pumping and pollution, urban development such as highways and buildings, vandalism, guano mining, and oil and gas drilling. "Everything from teenagers having a party to some guy who doesn't know what to do with his trash," Tutchton said. "It's the tragedy of having too many people with glass beer bottles unsupervised. "Most of the caves I've been to in the Untied States are fairly lifeless because they've been so visited or abused," he added. On the whole, litigation over federally listed cave species has not been as contentious as litigation over other federally listed species. "Grizzly bears or spotted owls have enormous ranges," said Tom Aley, a professional hydrogeologist and president of the Ozark Underground Laboratory in Missouri. "With cave fishes, generally you will have a population site and seldom will it incorporate an area of more than 20 square miles. Many times it's much smaller." He said the government and private entities have gotten better about addressing potential problems early on before a lawsuit is filed. "Go out and get the data you need. Avoid those surprises, because it's pretty easy to get an injunction if you have missed an obvious step," said Aley, who has been retained by a wide array of clients, including municipal airports, state highway departments, private individuals and environmental groups to delineate the recharge areas of cave systems. He just finished a job for the city of Springfield, Mo., in which he analyzed a well dug 25 feet deep with a pool of water at the bottom in order to determine whether it was endangered cave fish habitat. It turned out that there were fish at the site, but they were not cave dwellers, and the project, a sewer line, was cleared to proceed as scheduled. "It was similar in general appearance to many cave fish sites, so it was certainly an appropriate thing to look at," Aley said. Even when best practices haven't been followed, cave advocates often resort to restoration work and educational efforts rather than lawsuits. The American Cave Conservation Association, for example, directs efforts to keep people out of ecologically sensitive caves, restore original air flows and clean up dump sites that contribute to groundwater pollution. It also helped to clean up Hidden River Cave in Kentucky, which was once arguably the most polluted cave in the United States, according to Dave Foster, executive director of the ACCA. He said the public was generally unaware of risks to groundwater, and that the law didn't offer much protection. "Cave streams aren't really groundwater and they're not really surface water," Foster said. "And the laws are written for groundwater and surface water, so cave streams sometimes fall between the cracks." He said that in cave country, which covers roughly 20 percent of the United States, a farmer can throw a dead cow into a sinkhole and the bacteria from that cow can be in someone's spring within a matter of hours. "All Americans should care about the groundwater issue, whether they give a hoot about whether a blind fish lives or not," Foster said. Joel Stevenson, chair of the National Speleological Society's legal committee, said there was more awareness of cave pollution now than there was 25 or 30 years ago. Nonetheless, he pointed to a proposed highway in the middle of a cave area in Kentucky as one example of a future threat. "It's a never-ending fight," Stevenson said. "When you think you've won a great battle, you find there's another threat coming along."
