Sadly this is a story I have seen twice in the last 24 hrs, but with two different caves.

The US policy with blanket cave closures to "stop" the spread of WNS has long since shown ineffective but now it is blatantly hurting the very ecosystems it wishes to protect. When you remove those who care, prevent them from managing the caves they've managed for decades keeping them in pristine condition, protecting them; when these people are no longer allowed, all that is left are the vandals who destroy.

Fern Cave in Alabama, the largest cave in Alabama and the home to the largest roost of Gray Bats in the WORLD is now at high risk from vandals. A recent approved trip for scientific research found arrows etched into walls, marking the way to the Gray Bat summer roost. More arrows marked the way all the way into Helictite Heaven, one of the most delicate and highly decorated rooms in all of TAG. Initials gratified...etc. You all know cave vandalism. can read more here... http://www.forums.caves.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&p=107918#p107916

Bowden Cave in WV has met similar tragedy...read the description for the video, "highlights" include not only the trash and graffiti, but also evidence of at least one bat a victim of vandal attack.  Bowden Cave Conservation and Inventory Efforts June 23, 2011

I just...all this stuff makes me literally cry. I don't understand how the USFWS and other gov't agencies can be so...STUPID. It's not for us not speaking up and trying to explain why blanket closures are such a horrible policy, we do. And we're ignored. How many caves, how many bats, how many formations, irreplaceable, need to be destroyed before they listen?

Amy

From your post, this doesn't seem to mean that, in those cases the closure policy is ineffective. Rather it means that it is not being policed and is therefore pointless. It is clear that the caves concerned are not being kept closed and visitors are not being kept out.

The policy may, or may not, be ineffective or wrong but it doesn't look like it has actually been effectively applied and is thus untested.

Inneffective in regards to what? Vandals are not cavers who would perhaps travel from one region to another to cave, therefore they could not be spreading WNS.

If they want to keep a "close all caves" policy, as you said, they at least need to enforce it. Right now it's management by abandonment, which is duh not going to work. But they (policymakers) don't have resources or knowledge to police caves and clean up graffiti and monitor bats and collect samples for scientific study to try and figure this thing out, cavers do. But why would they admit needing help from the very people they are blaming for WNS in the first place? They have no motivation to.

As cavers, we're trying to spread the word about what is going on, but every article that comes out is all sourced by the very gov't agencies that are behind the closures so public opinion is still "well the only thing is to close caves, and hope" spun with total lack of actual data and research to support old policies that sure at the start made sense (new disease? quarantine!) except even the "quarantine" didn't work because it was just stopping cavers from getting in and out, not the bats themselves. So even then I don't think it really made sense...if you have some new human disease epidemic you'd not just say "ok no one go visit this city" you'd also add "no one in this city is allowed out either".

It's very different here. I got the feeling that in the UK ya'all basically cooperate, bat workers, cavers, gov't. Here, cavers are the weird small population of people, from what I understand most bat workers are cavers so they are glumped right in, and the gov't is left making policy based on whimsy because they sure as heck aren't going to listen to the very groups of people who they decided to blame. Because someone has to be the scapegoat, and they chose cavers at the start. So *every* media story, every bit of data getting out to the public, has the "cavers are bad" spin. We're trying to spread the word to correct that, and frankly this is where i think the NSS did a shitty job getting their butt in gear and let that go on too  long at the start from everything I can tell, but that's the past and this is now, we're stuck playing catch-up with a bad taste to our names.

Things are slowly getting better, starting to see articles wording change from "cavers spread WNS" to "cavers might spread WNS, but bat to bat transmission is the primary form" sort of thing. The CBD (Ctr for Biological Diversity) challenged the permits for caving at the  NSS Convention currently going on, filing intent to sue and such. The judge denied the CBD's motion and permits were kept. There was a congressional hearing recently that Peter did a great job testifying at too, can read transcript here http://naturalresources.house.gov/UploadedFiles/YoungbaerTestimony06.24.11.pdf it's actually a great overview of current policy and what is going on if you are curious. Hopefully things will slowly come around.