A Year of Conservation
Published: Fall, 2004

It’s been a busy 2004. Through the generosity of our members, the WCC has built up a significant war chest, allowing us to move confidently when opportunities arise to protect threatened caves. We’ve worked hard to advance the projects we already had going (Rippled and M2), and have started several new projects. Though we haven’t been able to purchase a cave yet, it isn’t for lack of trying.

Advocacy and Outreach
The WCC focused attention on the situation at Millerton Lake Caves in California, and the authorities in charge of the storage project there are now fully aware of the caves and potential impacts to them. We’ll keep our members informed as the situation progresses.

When the Park Service called for help restoring Crystal Cave in Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Park, several WCC members rose to the challenge, helping to haul thousands of pounds of rubble out of the cave and up a long steep grade. Formations buried for decades shine once again, and the old bathrooms (inside the cave!) are gone.

Acquisitions and Landowner Relations
Since its very inception, the WCC has worked to save Rippled Cave, a popular recreation and training cave in central California. We’re happy to report a positive development. The owner has verbally agreed to our offer, but a related transaction must first be concluded. This could happen as soon as January, but may take several months.

In addition, the WCC has engaged the neighboring landowners to better understand their needs and concerns. Despite past efforts by concerned cavers to control visitation on behalf of the landowner, the cave continues to attract trespassers whose abuses of the neighborhood include blocking the private road, parking on nearby properties, and even lighting campfires.

Until the conservancy owns the property, we have no power to address neighbors’ concerns, or for that matter, our own. However, we join with the Mother Lode Grotto of the National Speleological Society, which has helped the owner manage the cave, in asking those wishing to visit Rippled Cave to continue the voluntary moratorium on trips.

Our recently-formed Stewardship Committee is creating a management plan for the property. Our goals are to protect and conserve the land and its cave, to prevent trespass, to provide for reasonable levels of authorized visitation, and to be good neighbors and responsible landowners.

Throughout the year, we have tracked M2 Cave in southern Oregon as it changed hands. At the new landowners’ behest, WCC staff made the first organized trip to the cave since 1997, and confirmed that M2 is beautiful and well worth protecting. Currently we are discussing several conservation options with the landowners. They have expressed strong interest in a government land swap.

We are pursuing several other projects (both cave purchases and joint conservation agreements) in California and Arizona. Due to the sensitive and protracted nature of these efforts, we cannot announce particulars unless and until they come to fruition.

You Can Help!
We can only work on the properties we know about. A majority of Western cavers have long opposed establishing a comprehensive database of Western caves, and no such database or survey is available to the conservancy. Knowledge of caves in our territory resides primarily with local cavers, speleologists and NSS grottos, and we rely on them to tell us about properties in need of protection.

If you know of a cave in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, Utah or Arizona that you’d like to see the conservancy purchase, please contact Land Research Advisory Committee Chair Rolf Aalbu, at raalbu@westerncaves.org. Information received by the committee is kept in strict confidence and cannot be released without the explicit consent of the Board of Directors and on a case-by-case basis.

Let us know as much of the following as you can:

1. Briefly describe the cave, and include a map if possible.
2. Describe the cave’s biological, geological, hydrological, archeological, historic, aesthetic, recreational or other significance.
3. How vulnerable is the cave to development, quarrying, timber harvest, damage from unregulated visitation, or other pressures? Are any threats imminent?
4. Who visits the cave, and how often?
5. In your opinion, is recreational access appropriate, and to what degree?
6. Who owns the cave? Provide the county assessor’s parcel number if possible.
7. Does the landowner know about the cave?
8. How large is the property?
9. Describe the surface topography and vegetation. Are there special features above ground, such as an archeological site or endangered species? Is the surface relatively pristine, or highly disturbed?
10. Are there any improvements (structures, wells, etc.) on the property?
11. Try to give us a sense of property values in the area and the trend over time.