A Brief History of Cave Conservation
by Bruce Rogers and Pat Helton
Published: Summer, 2004

Editors note: This article describes some, but by no means all of the cave conservation efforts that preceded the founding of the Western Cave Conservancy. However, as the authors have lamented, to adequately describe the history of Cave Conservation in the Western U.S. is a task far beyond the scope (and room) of this publication. Hopefully in the future, in some other venue, we will be able to provide a more complete history by the authors.

By the middle 1870s, the human tide of the 1849 Gold Rush had ebbed and life regained a more normal pace. California’s caves, however, had paid a terrible price. Many of the pristine caves had suffered through the "we selected good specimens and moved on" mentality and were shells of their former selves. We know even less about the biota of the caves, save it must have been a rude shock to the critters when some 90,000 miners roared into the region, tearing up the earth itself, all hell-bent on getting rich quick.

The first organized caving in the Far West began with the University of California’s efforts in the Pleistocene bone caves of Northern California between 1901 and 1908. While their thrust was paleontology, they recognized that preservation of these cave sites was important for future studies. With the discovery of the Rancho La Brea tar pit deposits in 1908, paleontologist’s attention shifted to these fabulously rich deposits and the Northern California bone caves were relegated to history. Since most of the Klamath and northern Sierra caves were already on Federal land, they were thought to be relatively immune from vandalism, a grievous misconception given the actions of visitors to these caves over the next half-century.

Cave studies and conservation in the Far West lay idle for nearly 40 years until Erwin Bischoff began solo caving in California. Bischoff learned of the newly formed National Speleological Society (NSS) in 1941, joined, and set to compiling the first California cave list between 1940 and 1946. While it is hard to read between the lines of Erwin’s few writings, we can surmise his thoughts about the future of California’s caves. Erwin was basically a conservationist and while compiling a list may have made the caves known to uncaring visitors, it also provided the roots for an informed and concerned caving community. This informed community could then act as advocates for the caves’ management and preservation. Generous with his cave knowledge with pioneer NSS grottos in the state such as Southern California and Stanford, Erwin was truly the Father of California Speleology and cave conservation.

With the establishment of the Stanford and Southern California Grottos in 1948, cavers began to compile greater amounts of cave data and take stock of what spelean wonders were there for the exploring. The near legendary Stanford Grotto in particular was far-sighted in its attempts to compile as much information as possible about the current status of California caves. With the Stanford Grotto disbandment in 1954, a few hard-core members formed the Western Speleological Institute to carry on the high caliber work. This organization rather quickly transformed into Cave Research Associates (CRA).

Their credo was extremely conservative for the time, advocating scholarly research and publication along with sport caving while publishing virtually no "cave lists" as we know them today. They cautioned against even publicizing cave names for, as Ray de Sassure cautioned in 1953: It must be remembered also that once publicity has been given to a cave, it can never be withdrawn, as numerous examples will instantly show. The quickest way to invite destruction, total destruction, of any of the above sites is to publicize them, lock them for a period, then, withdrawing the protection, permit uncontrolled access.

Observing the destruction wrought upon California’s caves up to that point, they had a chilling view into the possible future of the state’s caving legacy.

At about the same time, a few more liberal members of the recently inactivated Stanford Grotto combined forces with other NSS members and formed the Western Speleological Survey. This group, led by Bill Halliday, quickly morphed into the California Speleological Survey. Similar to Cave Research Associates, they began to compile a large volume on caves in California. Unlike CRA, these efforts were for eventual publication. Initially it was to be an NSS Bulletin, but production problems scuttled that plan. Then it was to come out as a California Division of Mines and Geology Bulletin, but funding problems forced abandonment of that scheme as well.

By ten years later in the 1960s, California’s caves were showing a great deal of wear and tear and some cavers began to feel uneasy about their future. Land was being bought up in the Mother Lode, southern Sierra Foothills, and even in the far northern volcanic country. The rush was to escape the San Francisco Bay and Los Angeles Basin megalopolis and retreat into the more rural expanses of the state. With this rural population boom came the first blossoming of what we now call ecotourism. Outfitters ran groups down semi-pristine rivers, took them backpacking in the high sierra, and also took them into caves for pay.

The organized caving community itself was undergoing a population boom as the Baby Boomers acquired the time and funds to adopt a more "natural" mode of recreation. Political awareness spilled over into conservation awareness and the youth of the U.S. became aware of the threats unbridled development posed to the natural world. A flurry of new NSS Grottos and other unaligned caving groups sprung up in the middle 1960s to 1970s. Some cavers were uneasy about the caver population boom, but with cave access still fairly open, nothing was done to prepare for the inevitable crunch of too many cavers, too few caves, and way too many liability-shy landowners.

Slowly and almost imperceptibly, access to some of the better-known caves in the Mother Lode and other cave-rich areas was withdrawn, forcing cavers into a "polite trespass" mode of cave visitation. Nearly 80 caves throughout the Sierra Nevada and Coast Ranges became either closed to access or were quietly visited on a "don’t ask, don’t tell" basis. At least 20 caves have been either blasted shut or quarried away—resources and recreation sites lost forever. Most of the larger caves in the southern Sierra were on public land, but there, too, access began to be selective with the Federal and State managers restricting what was, up to that time, unfettered access. While East Coast cavers were starting to negotiate for cave access with private landowners and outright purchase of caves, Western cavers were more reluctant to address the loss of access to caves since many of these were on public land.

Over the years, cavers had become habituated to politely trespassing on many cave-containing private landholdings. This has become and will increasingly become more difficult as the widening spread of rural development and remote surveillance of otherwise inaccessible locations accelerates. Caves to which visitation has been successfully prevented may fade from caving community’s collective consciousness. It will be thus that the caves are left without advocates in the event they are threatened by mining, clear-cut logging, or simple residential development. Caves to which no legitimate access exists are denied proper management and experience steady aesthetic and habitat degradation from well-meaning, but careless or ignorant, trespassers.

In the early to middle 1970s several Mother Lode Grotto members, among them Dave Cowan, attempted to start a California Cave Conservancy intending to buy up a few of the more popular caves. This effort, while laudable, was doomed from the start by a lack of cash and a still nascent conservation ethic that failed to see the threat to most of caves on private land looming at the horizon and already spilling into the Mother Lode. The California Region of the NSS debated the idea of cave access agreements and even possible cave purchase, but little came from it. The incorporation of Nevada into the California Region made a name change to the California-Nevada Region, and with the addition of more grottos in 1973, the name changed to the Western Region. Despite this larger member base, only a small amount of constructive action was undertaken. Individual cavers or small groups of cavers, with little region-wide participation, took on the brunt of dealing with increasingly contentious cave access/ land owner awareness situations.

The confluence of the Main and South Forks of the Stanislaus River lies nearly in the middle of the Mother Lode cave area. The building of the New Melones Reservoir along the middle reach of the Stanislaus River in the late 1970s resulted in several cave areas being acquired by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and administrated by the Bureau of Reclamation. Despite the reports resulting from this project being essentially a data base of cave locations and descriptions, they did point out caves and cave areas that should be protected to preserve their rich speleological resources for future studies. While technically protected, the caves were never managed in a conservation-oriented manner.

With the completion of the Cataract Quarry in the 1970s, a large area along the Stanislaus River canyon was fast disappearing into the crushers as raw material for cement production. Access to popular caves in and around the quarry was restricted and several caves were destroyed as the quarry enlarged. These actions finally tilted the balance of benign neglect to active concern for preserving the Mother Lode caves.

By 1979, at least one NSS member had taken steps to preserve California caves. Ralph Squire of the Stanislaus Speleological Association Grotto moved to Columbia in the Mother Lode and purchased the old Columbia Marble (Bell Hill) Quarry as a travel trailer park. Now located in the heart of the Mother Lode cave belt, he started the Columbia Grotto of the NSS. In addition to owning a viable recreational area, Ralph researched the area, finding old reports of caves and fissures in the Bell Hill Quarry. His action, along with Cowan’s constant urging for some sort of collective inter-grotto or regional action, while not generally being recognized as an initial step in cave conservation, was instrumental in beginning to alter caver’s thinking about buying caves as conservation areas.

In the 1980s, the availability of tourist-oriented travel and relatively cheap airfares lured cavers far afield from their homes. Expeditions to other U.S. classic cave areas and, increasingly, foreign countries became commonplace. With these enlarged horizons of apparently endless, intact caves, many cavers ceased visiting their local caves. By the end of the 1980s many of the popular regional caves were further stripped of their remaining decorations and their cave life massively impacted by a generation of new cavers with a nihilistic philosophy of "why bother with cave conservation, none of this will survive anyway." The press of continued development of the Mother Lode for recreational vacation cabins and year-round homes increasingly surfaced as not only denial of access to some favored caves by liability-conscious owners, but also older access routes to some caves were shut off due to new housing developments. While many cavers in the Region privately supported a more conservation- oriented approach along with responsibility-enhancing alterations in caving styles and techniques, few were willing to publicly support or engage in these mores or support purchase or lease of caves. Still, despite some major setbacks, individual cavers and small groups of cavers continued to actively negotiate with landowners for access to their caves, ensuring a future for California caving.

By the turn of the twenty-first century, the dwindling access to caves and the lowering of expectations of how pristine these caves were reached a flash point. A region- wide drive to construct a cave research center in Lava Beds National Monument on the Oregon border had been mobilized. NSS Western Region members provided the bulk of the nearly quarter million dollars required to build the center. Regional cavers were thus energized (and slightly amazed) by their own collective ability to fund such a large ticket project. At the same time, members of several grottos in the Western Region began to formulate a cave conservation organization of region-wide scope. A board of respected cavers and scientists was assembled, and they selected Marianne Russo as president. With these actions, the Western Cave Conservancy (WCC) was born.

With a regional scope, the WCC has pursued several major projects including multiple cave purchases (underway even as you read this article) and cave access and management agreements. With adequate funding in hand to initiate these activities and the drive of members to assist, the future of the WCC follows a long record of cave conservation concerns among Pacific Slope cavers.