How do BCAs problems impact cavers, caving, and caves?

[Ian Adams]

Conifers are native to cold environments. They were introduced into warmer countries as they grow much faster than hardwoods and are/were commercially viable.

The contra is the expense to the native hardwoods.

This is a 1950's/1960's philosophy that (in the UK at least) is now considered flawed.

I don't think there is a parallel to caving .....

Ian

 

[corax]

Assuming that the BCA have problems,  (I don't care one way or the other about any internal strife) so long as they can continue to manage effectively their PLI policy then that is all that matters. The rest of us will just go caving.

 

[droid]

I don't think there is a parallel to caving .....

Ian

Anywhere there is modern human interaction with the 'natural' environment, it is degraded from that 'natural' state. That's the parallel.

As the devilish Mullan pointed out that's more important in a low-energy environment like a dry cave.

However, in an above-ground biota, the damage 'heals'. And despite Kenilworths' dissing of my old Ecology lecturer, that will continue, so the parallel with caves is highly tenuous in a human time-scale.

 

[Kenilworth]

I don't think there is a parallel to caving .....

Ian

Anywhere there is modern human interaction with the 'natural' environment, it is degraded from that 'natural' state. That's the parallel.

That's a loose parallel, but not mine.
My point is that we have not used our enormous power in harmony with and respect for the natural resources that created it. We are arrogantly and ignorantly cutting ourselves off at the root. The danger of that oblivious attitude does not have a direct parallel in caving, as our health as humans does not much depend on caves. The fact that our ways of using the land have been a huge success, materially, immediately, superficially, have blinded us to the fact that they have been tragically hurtful to communities, that is, places, including all of their people, plants, animals, water and soil.

So we have not learned restraint, respect or responsibility from the societies we live in. How can we be expected to show them once passing into a cave entrance?

Droid's observation that the earth heals, and relatively rapidly, is clearly factual. This is why I'm not drawing a parallel between land and caves, but between our behavior in both. Arguments like Droid's, that the earth will heal, have been used to permit all sorts of abuses (of course it cannot heal if our abuses continue to accelerate). If cavers carry the carelessness of such philosophies underground, consciously or not, they will do much harm.

This is part of a line of questions to understand what might happen to caves without BCA. Would the decrease in caver numbers (if there would be one) and an increased difficulty in getting some access (if there would be one) create a net positive or negative, conservation-wise. My guess, based on what I've read here, is that it wouldn't make much difference.

 

[cavemanmike]

According to the book sapiens brief history of human life humans won't be on the planet in a thousand years time, so the planet will have all the time in the world to repair itself from human destruction