What do people estimate as the current number of 'cavers' in the UK? Talking, I guess, those that get underground a minimum of at least once a month.

We can always start another thread over what constitutes a caver (how often, how hard etc) but sheer numbers is what interests me most right now.

Cheers for assistance, wild guesses, etc etc

I remember seeing this on quite a few other threads, I think the general conclusion is that we'll never have any good idea, because sources of data are many and overlapping and not exhaustive. Not everyone is in a club, many people are in multiple clubs and so it's very hard to come up with anything concrete.

Maybe we could find out how many oversuits are sold in a year and guess that way. But then again, caving once a month doesn't wear one out much.

I give up.

Why don't we add a poll to this thread and take wild guesses, it's about as useful as any other method.

0-2000
2001-4000
4001-6000
6001-8000
8001-10000
10000+

BCA has of the order of 5000 individual members (CIMs and DIMs). This probably represents at least 90% of the club cavers/mine explorers in the UK. I'd guess that there were an additional 1000 or so people who cave reasonably frequently but who are not part of the BCA/club system.

Contrary to what Christian says, there are practically no duplicates in these numbers - BCA can individually name all its members and we go to some lengths to ensure that people are only in the database once.

Glenn can give you more accurate figures for BCA membership if you need them. If you have a specific reason for needing to know, I'd be interested to know what it is.

Nick.

Ah, here it is:

http://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?topic=5625.0

5400.

(Nut)Bar the shouting.

42

j4nny said:

42

Click to expand...

We are talking number of cavers, not your age 

We Are Legion!

I am Spartacus.

seddon said:

What do people estimate as the current number of 'cavers' in the UK? Talking, I guess, those that get underground a minimum of at least once a month.

We can always start another thread over what constitutes a caver (how often, how hard etc) but sheer numbers is what interests me most right now.

Cheers for assistance, wild guesses, etc etc

Click to expand...

At least you got one sensible answer before the rot set in!

You will have to take 2 off the total as Hugh and me only manage a real life cave once every two or three months. The rest of the time we are to be found at Templeton, but some people don't consider that is underground!

nickwilliams said:

BCA has of the order of 5000 individual members (CIMs and DIMs). This probably represents at least 90% of the club cavers/mine explorers in the UK.

Click to expand...

6% of my club's members are based overseas. To get an estimate of UK cavers you might want to reduce the BCA membership figure by 5 to 10%.

Interesting point. YSS have some Irish and Dutch based cavers.

cap 'n chris said:

5400.

(Nut)Bar the shouting.

Click to expand...

How many of them are descent looking birds
:-\

cap 'n chris said:

5400.

Click to expand...

Reduced by the estimated 10% gives a new ballpark figure:

4860

whitelackington said:

cap 'n chris said:

5400.

(Nut)Bar the shouting.

Click to expand...

How many of them are descent looking birds
:-\

Click to expand...

Cover girls?

on a more serious note the figure that always used to be bandied about was 12,000. What is more interesting is the number of diehards ie those who go on for years (or is that just the average number attending Hidden Earth).

While the BCA membership numbers are clear and relatively unambiguous, they reflect both caving and non-caving members and, if my clubs are anything to go by, many of the caving members do not cave at least once a month, as Seddon specifies.

I note from the latest Descent (that I've just finished reading) that this year's Hidden Earth came close to having 1000 man-days - the highest ever!

mrodoc said:

on a more serious note the figure that always used to be bandied about was 12,000. What is more interesting is the number of diehards ie those who go on for years (or is that just the average number attending Hidden Earth).

Click to expand...

The 12000 figure comes from peak BCRA days when the cost per head was so small that it was not worth the effort of getting a list of names and addresses to remove duplicates across clubs.  (A postal survey was conducted in around 1995 and 1998 which indicated a moderate level of people did have duplicate membership.  I have no recollection of what duplicate membership is like in BCA data.) 

Diehards is an unknown since age is not collected.  One could get an idea by conducting a poll but the degree of bias in on line polls is usually high; as would be going round Hidden Earth.  Similarly activity level is not really known. The number of Non Caving BCA members is very small.  I rather felt that such a low figure meant that a fair number of members might well go caving at least once or twice per year which is lower than the suggested once per month threshold.   

Another uncounted area is those clubs who are just club members of BCA without insurance cover.  I can't recall the percentage of these clubs but recall it is a moderate sized minority.  But as their membership numbers are quite small, it points to yet more cavers though I guess at less than 500 (discounting duplication).  And then there are those cavers who do not belong to anything.  I have occasionally wondered about doing a survey by standing at the entrance to a popular cave and asking the question.  But sad as many may consider me to be, I am not yet that sad.

If I recall correctly Nick's figure includes all members which also includes a fair number from both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. 

So all in all my guess would be around 5000 +/- 1000 overall with probably 1500 +/-1000 caving more than once per month (based on purely gut feel from knowledge of members in the 2 clubs I am a member of.)  One might get a better estimate of active cavers by analysing some club logs to see what percentage do regularly cave. 

I have a number of caver buddies who are not in any club, so you can add about 5 to the total?