Karen, As one who believes in conservation, I guess the only way to keep caves truly pristine is for no one to enter them. However, I don't believe in this approach. If no one entered them they would be of no use to scientist or to the multitudes who visit them for their beauty, entertainment and for the opportunity for adventure and discovery. From that standpoint, it would be as if they did not exist.
Those who enjoy this vocation and avocation will visit caves when the opportunity presents itself and most will take great care to do the least amount of damage possible. Thanks to BCI and other organizations, many non-cavers are aware of the vital benefits derived from bats and cavers do what is necessary to protect them and their habitat. Here is to many hours of enjoyment in our beautiful Texas caves and continued work to preserve them. Fritz _____ From: Karen Perry [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, January 25, 2008 1:19 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Texascavers] Damaging Formations on Caving Show Gill is always so elegant in his wording. I appreciate his perspective here. And as usual, he is right. When I started the Mirror Lake Restoration Project at CCNP, we all (Dale, Tom, me) thought it would a quick easy. That was until I did my first test patch in Oct. 2005. Now, if I get a 3 inch square complete in a day, I am happy. And everything I am dealing with is from human intervention in the cave. At the deepest level of debris we have foot traffic mud from the Jim White days. Then we get trail building materials on top of that from the different trail evolutions. Add some splashing from years of hosing down the trails to keep them clean, what you end up with is a fine concrete of gunk on top of beautiful cave floor & formation. In places it may only be a couple of millimeters thick, in others we have pulled out as much as 18" of debris. Next, all this fragile beauty was formed over gypsum. Sadly many areas have cracks or have broken and turned to dust under the pattering of human feet. This has led to water dripping and oozing down to the gypsum dissolving it and creating hollow spots. In short, what was once an underground oasis of beautiful color and varying shapes in design, turned into a dark, dirty, unsightly spot in this miraculous cave. With lighting, much was and still is hidden. But with a flash light one may now experience shades of yellow, white, dove grey, purple, orange, red, white and blackish greys. Hidden in the gunk was cave coral, cave pearl nest, small stalagmites, rim stone dams, lilly pads................ small pools and so much more. But still the conflict remains. The only way to keep caves pristine is to stay out of them. Even with all we know about caving softly, we still impact the environment with our very presence. And so the dilemma continues. To cave or not to cave! Personnaly, I choose to cave. May science reign, exploration continue and the human experience become enriched by the marvels of nature! Karen At 02:40 PM 1/23/2008, Geary Schindel wrote: >Regarding your comment about whether speleothems >should be removed for use in scientific >interest. Well that depends - most scientists >are very responsible about the removal of >speleothems and would not recommend that >prominent formations be removed and if a >specimen needed to be collected, that it be done >so to minimize the impacts to a cave. Breaking or damaging cave formations (speleothems) has always been a philosophical No No within the caving community. The subject and the activity have received a lot of lip service and have been prominent points of cave conservation drilled into the minds of newbies using the force of peer pressure. Speleothem damage is routinely found appalling by cavers in public statements--verbal or written. But that is not necessarily the way formation removal is looked at by cavers in a cave. There are at least 2 camps, one pretty much on either end of the spectrum, of what one does in a cave when coming upon a nearly solid, impassable wall of columns blocking the way to a borehole passage on the other side of that curtain, clearly visible through unclosed gaps. One camp says that the need to break a formation in order to continue exploration means that the cave ends there. The sanctity of the formation is paramount and precludes further exploration. The other camp pulls out a hammer and, being as conservative as possible, smashes a minimum of formations and, hopefully, in a location which will offer minimal negative visual impact. But smash formations they do, and without remorse of any effective sort. Pure exploration is the name of the game and it must be pursued at all costs. One of the main realities of the actions of these two camps is that the conservationist purists go into a cave on Saturday and turn around as is their wont, leaving the cave formations otherwise undisturbed, sacrificing their own exploration urges in the name of "doing what's right", then the exploration oriented crew goes into the cave on Sunday, smashes a hole through the curtain and scoops the booty. Who won here? I think most cavers, while giving lip service to the rule of never breaking cave formations, would fall into the second camp when confronted with the reality of cave exploration. Is that hypocritical? In it's purist philosophical form, probably, but in practice it is merely a method of teaching and instilling a high awareness and practice of cave conservation in all cavers, new and established, while retaining some personal responsibility for making a decision to sacrifice a formation in pursuit of doing what one is there to do--explore the damned cave. That concept reeks of justification but, I think, most top-notch cavers have resolved the situation to where it doesn't bother them at all--so long as they are otherwise conscientious about how it's done. To wit: One of the people who influenced me a lot in my early caving days was Jack Burch. He had developed Caverns of Sonora and Natural Bridge Caverns here in Texas. Jack was TSA Chairman at the time and ran a very proper meeting observing Roberts' Rules of Order and behaved in a professional manner. So I was impressed by that and was privileged on several occasions to hang out with him at NBC where he was living at the time. He also gave talks at TSA meetings and the like from time to time about various aspects of developing wild caves into show caves--including photo documentation of it. One of my strongest memories of Jack was a talk where he was showing before and after pictures of his show cave development. The first shot was of a large, man's leg sized formation growing in the center of a narrow passage where the tourist trail HAD to go. The next shot showed him with a sledge hammer about to whack it. And the third showed him standing over the fallen formation like Teddy Roosevelt over a slain lion, sledge hammer still at the ready like Teddy with his rifle. "It took a lot of soul searching but the fact was that it had to be done," is a good paraphrase of his explanation. Jack showed dozens of photographs with the same theme, and not just big stals but walls of tiny helictites. While implied within his talks and slide shows was the concept that breaking formations or destroying parts of the cave was acceptable so long as it was directed toward a higher goal--ostensibly and arguably, in this case, teaching cave conservation to the general population through public displays of the cave and a token mention of the rule against damaging them--I always thought that Jack was always engaged in a subtle, even subconscious apology to cavers,his own peers, for not only having violated the rule and wontonly smashed formations he was also seeking to justify within his own mind both the damage he had personally done to the cave and any animosity or conservation frivolousness his views and activities may have instilled in cavers. However, Regarding your comment about whether speleothems should be removed for use in scientific interest--or any other reason, for that matter, the final answer is that it is good to preach that speleothem damage or removal is strictly forbidden, but it is another thing altogether to try to enforce such a stricture within the reality of the caving environment--especially during initial exploration when extending the cave is the goal, not the following of an arbitrary aesthetic philosophy to the letter. And scientists are on another plane altogether; they can and often do justify any action they take in the name of science--and the public generally forgives them--also in the name of science--the sanctity of science. But they are prone to follow more proper procedures in removing formations--they would use a rock hammer, for instance, instead of a sledge for breaking through. It's these subtleties that make the difference. That they showed the breaking of a cave formation on TV--and subsequently justified it--probably did the teaching of cave conservation a disservice. But, then, the showing of nearly anything relating to caving on TV probably, in the long run, does cave conservation a disservice--with a few exceptions. This whole discussion, however, has not dealt one bit with the disservice that cavers going into caves in the first place does to cave conservation. --Ediger --------------------------------------------------------------------- Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] _____ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. <http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=51438/*http:/www.yahoo.com/r/hs> _____ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. <http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=51734/*http:/tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearc h/category.php?category=shopping>
