The NSS, conservation, and the sacrificial cave.

Kenilworth

New member
This is a copy of my ramble posted on the NSS forum, which is now a ghost town. Clearly, conservation needs and methods are different in the UK and US. Still, I welcome comments on this topic as I'm trying to learn all I can about it.


The National Speleological Society is, according to its mission statement, dedicated to the conservation of caves and cave resources. This dedication seems to be primarily manifest in the promotion of the ?Caver?s Creed,? an idea, borrowed from the wider naturalist/conservationist movement, that explorers of wilderness should ?leave no trace.? In its most commonly known form, this creed states, ?Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints, kill nothing but time.? While this motto may be useful as an elementary means to remind cavers that it is unacceptable to befoul a cave with litter or to engage in needless demolition, it is also an oversimplification so vast as to become counterproductive if taken to be the sum of cave conservation. This is so for several reasons.

For one thing, it is impossible to ?leave nothing but footprints.? It would be unrealistic and inappropriate to believe that we can travel through caves, or do anything, anywhere, without leaving our marks and the detritus of our passing. So what the caver?s motto really means to most cavers is, ?Leave nothing visible to humans.? From this angle it becomes obvious that the caver?s motto is less about cave conservation than it is about preserving the so called ?wilderness experience.? While these ideals overlap considerably, they are by no means the same thing. To think of them as the same thing creates the dangerous attitude that things that do not impact the ?wilderness experience,? that is, things we cannot see, do not matter. Cave conservation, if it is to be anything other than anthropocentric or token, needs to be elementally understood before it can be reasonably and responsibly enacted. This involves understanding what cave resources exist, and determining their relative values as well as how each of them are impacted by a wide range of possible factors in a wide range of quantities. This will take a long time, and I suspect that we may eventually find that we have been wasting time with some of our conservation schemes, while being sadly negligent in other areas.

Another obvious problem with the Caver?s Creed, and one tied to the idea of wilderness, is that leaving footprints is not always acceptable. And besides footprints, the Creed suggests the inevitability of handprints and knee-prints, and of paths of mud left from the butts and bellies of cavers. It is not the only, or necessarily the most important of the cave resources, but aesthetic beauty is a significant resource worthy of protection. The caver?s motto falls heartbreakingly short in guiding behavior within caves whose beauty is easily destroyed by these marks. This inadequacy is hopefully becoming widely understood. The latest edition of the NSS? Guide to Responsible Caving amends the motto to say, ?Leave nothing but carefully placed footprints,? which is at least a slight improvement. Cavers in several of the world?s most stunningly beautiful caves go to extreme measures to ensure that they leave no footprints, no trails of mud. Most cave explorers though, view the changing and re-changing of clothes or practicing fastidious travel to be too much of a sacrifice of their time, and necessary only in ?world-class? caves. The results are unfortunate but unsurprising.

I have in mind two West Virginia caves that are very familiar to many cavers in the eastern United States, both in Greenbrier County. Bone-Norman Cave is privately owned but with open access, and contains highly decorated passages, the most famous of which is known as The Great White Way, and which is remote enough to preclude intense ?non-caver? traffic. Helectites here are a big draw, and the walls are crossed with white trails of evaporite. But at hand level here are brown streaks on the crystalline walls. Some helectites are broken. Most depressingly, the floors are a fine crush of crystals, the remnants of deposits that must have been stunning on first discovery. Similar is the Heaven passage of Maxwelton Cave. This cave is locked and conservancy-owned and sees only caver traffic. The Heaven passage is the only route in and out of the cave (more than a dozen miles long) since the burial of the natural entrances by flood and airport construction. That the portal to such a cave was dug here in the first place was a major conservation mistake, but the habits of the cavers who have mapped and explored the cave since reinforce the failure the caver?s motto to protect what ought to be protected. I have much respect for the cavers who are mapping this cave, and have joined in these efforts on three or four occasions. Nonetheless, the damage done to the Heaven passage cannot be healed or outweighed by a high-quality, modern map. It is difficult, even physically painful, for me to see these caves. The caver?s motto was not in their case an adequate conservation message.

If these two things are true; that a real understanding of cave conservation has not yet been reached and will take a long while to reach, and that the aesthetic conservation measures within our grasp are not being properly implemented, what can be done? The only meaningful way forward that I can see involves the reduction of cave traffic. This is an unpopular idea among cavers for obvious reasons, and many of us (including myself) will do our best to practice care but will not be willing to reduce our time spent caving. The NSS though, has the ability to decrease footfall in caves.

A recent article in the Chattanooga Times Free Press appeared under the heading, ?For 25 years, one local group has worked to preserve the region's vast network of caves.? The article was about the Southeastern Cave Conservancy Inc., an organization that owns or leases more than 130 caves in the eastern US. SCCI has a stated purpose to protect caves, and seems to do a good job of managing and caring for its holdings. But the biggest way that SCCI protects caves goes unstated on its website. This is by allowing recreational access, thereby condensing caver traffic to fewer caves. This is really a better version of the old idea of the ?sacrificial cave.?

Imagine the results if the NSS were to also take up the nationwide acquisition of recreationally significant caves that were best suited to handle high volume traffic without significant damage to the ?wilderness experience,? and to facilitate access to members and non-members (perhaps with separate conditions), all while presenting a well-crafted conservation message. I believe such efforts, if properly publicized, would lead to an increase in NSS membership as well as a decrease in traffic in other caves and a greater awareness of cave resources among unaffiliated cave explorers. Cavers have developed much skill in cave restoration. What better place to practice speleothem repair, graffiti and trash removal etc. than in caves that are providing a quality experience to visitors, thus negating their need to cave elsewhere.

The NSS asked me for money in an email today. This to pay for a great building that is said in the email to require ten-thousand dollars monthly to mortgage. How this building aids in the protection of caves I am not sure. I am sure that I will be giving the NSS no more of my money so long as it follows the trend of society in general toward more and more superficiality. I do not know if my ideas about cave conservation are good, sound, or reasonable ones. But they are at least ideas, and I believe it personally important to give much thought to the care of the Earth and of caves. Later in this space I will try to talk about cave gating, cave flagging, cave photography, and the role of cavers in educating landowners. I may be repeating ideas or even phrases that I?ve used elsewhere or at other times, but I?m trying to get this all out while the spirit is on me.
 

Peter Burgess

New member
It's sad that you don't have an active local channel where your article can be considered. It reads well, and sparks some interesting thoughts. I would like to read the ideas you have about other things which you mention in your last paragraph.
 

Bob Mehew

Well-known member
A literal interpretation of the 'leave nothing but footprints' message is clearly misguided when one is talking about a formation filled passage.  But what about in an active stream way?  Getting a form of words to cover the spread of situations is difficult.  And getting a simple message which catches the eye / ear to draw that person into learning more is very challenging. 

BCA C&A committee has  been working on an update to its messages, see http://british-caving.org.uk/wiki3/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=about:documents:council_meetings:council_minutes_2015-10-10.pdf for a draft, which I understand will be unveiled at EuroSpeleo 2016.
 

fredthedog

New member
Very interesting, thank you.

I was a member of NSS for quite a few years after taking a trip with friends to an Old Timers' reunion, then caving in Virginia and West Virginia. I thought they used to run some good conservation related articles in their newsletters/bulletins. Surprised and sorry to hear their forum seems to have died off.

The concept of sacrificial caves versus the wilderness experience is one that I've tried to get my head around on a number of occasions. And although I don't like the concept of sacrificing anything, in practice, every area has a couple of caves that fall into the 'sacrificial' bracket, and how to manage this is something we should be thinking about, as well as how to protect new discoveries as well as existing caves.

Agreed totally about the 'leave nothing bit footprints'. It was catchy at the time, but far too simplistic now. Footprints are often a huge part of the problem, as you've pointed out here.

Thanks again for a very thoughtful and thought-provoking piece.
 

tamarmole

Active member
Do we need a slogan?  Most of us are probably intelligent enough to think beyond sound bites.

My approach to the underground environment, and I would hope that of most people on UKC, is minimisation of impact.  On a tourist trip this may well mean "leave only footprints", however in a long term dig the concept of minimisation of impact will mean something wholly different. 
 

Peter Burgess

New member
Slogans are not essential, but they do help to develop a mindset. The take only photos, leave only footprints one is very effective in this regard.
 

Andyj23UK

New member
i just feel comeled to point out that in certain cave environments :

" leaving nothing but footprints " is still a fooking disaster from a cave conservation perspective :

i specifically mean through :

archelogically important mud banks // cracked mud floors

calcite floors // cave pearls etc etc

[ in mines ] archelogicsally important footprints [ hobnail boot tracks from 150 years ago ] - this is not a contradiction

anything else i have missed .

so - footprints should only be left where footprints are ` low impact `
 

Badlad

Administrator
Staff member
There used to be another slogan commonly used in American caving;

"Pack it in, Pack it out"

It always seemed very good advice to me and can apply as much to local digs as to exploration of deep foreign caves.  I think it is more useful than the "take nothing but..."  It only deals with one aspect of conservation though, as do other slogans.

 

cooleycr

Active member
I'm with Peter Burgess on this one - "take only photos, leave only footprints " is VERY affective as it is simple and relevant....

ok so if we strip it down then we find that actually, it is not okay to leave footprints, as per Andyj23UK, and this not only applies in the underground world but above ground where the original slogan was designed for - after all, why do so many mountains now have cut-out steps to aid the tourist and try to limit the damage to the site, Kinder Scout in our patch has a walkway consisting of paving slabs to protect the peat bogs etc.
It might also not be okay to take photos as the infra-red auto-focusing and the flash gun "might" cause damage to the cave/mine materials?

so we have to rely on common sense and cavers (and walkers/climbers etc. respecting the environment and taking care at all times..
 

andrewmcleod

Well-known member
cooleycr said:
ok so if we strip it down then we find that actually, it is not okay to leave footprints, as per Andyj23UK, and this not only applies in the underground world but above ground where the original slogan was designed for - after all, why do so many mountains now have cut-out steps to aid the tourist and try to limit the damage to the site, Kinder Scout in our patch has a walkway consisting of paving slabs to protect the peat bogs etc.
It might also not be okay to take photos as the infra-red auto-focusing and the flash gun "might" cause damage to the cave/mine materials?

Outdoors there is weather. In caves there is not. Weather destroys footprints (eventually). They (or delicate formations which would damaged by footprints) can last indefinitely in a fossil cave passage.

It is worth knowing the limits of common sense. I would love to read a clear, simple guide to fragile cave (stal, crystal, rock, mud, sand) formations, how they are important, and how to protect them. Mostly I trudge around caves with a fair degree of ignorance, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this.
 

Bob Mehew

Well-known member
andrewmcleod said:
Outdoors there is weather. In caves there is not. Weather destroys footprints (eventually). They (or delicate formations which would damaged by footprints) can last indefinitely in a fossil cave passage.
Sorry your time view is too short.  I suggest climate change can make significant changes to caves in time periods of 100s' of years or less, earth quakes over 1000's of years and so it goes on.  And over a few millions of years, will the cave remain?

I would also suggest walking with muddy boots in a stream way will leave no trace.  Phrasing a message which covers all such circumstances is more than just difficult.  The trick will be to get a form of words that not too many pedants (or is that pendants) will comment on.

And how to do we reach out to idiots, vandals and the alike?
 

Kenilworth

New member
Bob Mehew said:
Sorry your time view is too short.  I suggest climate change can make significant changes to caves in time periods of 100s' of years or less, earth quakes over 1000's of years and so it goes on.  And over a few millions of years, will the cave remain?

I would also suggest walking with muddy boots in a stream way will leave no trace.  Phrasing a message which covers all such circumstances is more than just difficult.  The trick will be to get a form of words that not too many pedants (or is that pendants) will comment on.

And how to do we reach out to idiots, vandals and the alike?

The fact that caves are changing naturally and will ultimately be destroyed does nothing to reduce our responsibility of care.

I do not know who specifically Bob is "accusing" of pedantry, but my purpose in pointing out flaws in the caver's slogan was not to suggest a better slogan. Rather, since "Phrasing a message which covers all such circumstances is more than just difficult," we may as well forget slogans altogether and start doing something. Slogans are dangerous, and nearly always border on propaganda.

Cavers should not howl too much at the idea of the high-traffic recreational cave as a "sacrifice". They themselves are already sacrificing many caves to their own selfishness, only not with beer bottles and spray paint. If recreationally significant caves are owned and maintained by cave conservancies, they will fill the needs of some cavers, of many non-affiliated cave explorers, and of many "idiots" who in trashing caves are only mimicking what they have seen done there already. This is the real opportunity to educate, that is, while giving something in return. If we provide non-judgmental access to anyone who wants it, while presenting a well-crafted conservation message via signage, leaflets, a simple permit process, etc., and most importantly by showing visitors a well-maintained cave, we will be teaching them the value of conservation while reducing footfall in other caves. This means that such conservancies will have to accept the responsibility of cleaning and repairing their caves. SCCi are doing this to some extent in the US, and I believe that their model can be the basis for expanded and improved methods.
 
Top