PeteHall said:
Brains said:
I think in terms of vulnerability fauna, sediments and formations would be viewed as most at risk, and therefore higher priority for protection.
No intention to mis-quote you Brains, just highlighting you mention of "sediments".
Forgive my ignorance, but simply put, why are sediments important? I know they are because I've been told they are, but nobody has ever explained why.
Is it simply a point of interest, part of the history of the cave, or is there some scientific importance too?
The palaeomagnetism and magnetic fabric of cave sediments from Pwll y Gwynt, South Wales by Mark Noel:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248215620_The_palaeomagnetism_and_magnetic_fabric_of_cave_sediments_from_Pwll_y_Gwynt_South_Wales
This was the first instance of evidence being found in Quaternary cave deposits in Britain for the reversal of the magnetic pole. Such a reversal had previously only been detected in lake deposits.
Detailed core-sampling work has also been done in Agen Allwedd by Pete Bull.
There's a lot more left to do.
SamT said:
. . .
However, its no good if its been rolled up into little balls, thrown at the walls and moulded into little mudmen.
This is a classic example of where well-intentioned 'conservation' measures are proposed that help collapse the actual implementation of good cave conservation practice underground.
Hard-hitting rules that are blankly applied across the spectrum do little to help advance notions of good cave conservation.
For a start, I put a considerable length of the first marker tapes down in Jigsaw Passage in Daren Cilau and was absolutely dumbfounded later to see that
one person had decided to cross the tapes and put their bootmarks across an otherwise pristine section of clay sediments for everyone else to see . . . and
emulate? Was this in order to be contrary against what was considered 'normal', to be the first person to place bootmarks on otherwise untrampled cave floor, or simply just out of ignorance and/or tiredness and not looking where they were going?
If cave conservation measures are not reasonable, then how are you even going to start dealing with the people who are likely to do unreasonable things?
The best way to conserve cave passages is to make access as difficult as possible - not by introducing gates and the human politics of 'control', but preferably by leaving natural obstacles as intact as possible and not providing blasted crawls, blasted squeezes, handlines and ladders, except where such things are essential for safety or good caving practice.
Yes, do mark off important and vulnerable speleothems and clay sediments, but be aware that there are idiots around who might treat excessive cave taping as a red rag affects a bull.
But
no clay sculptures in caves?! I know of a number of places underground where such artistic works have been created, where there has been no threat to sediments that would in any way be considered important for sampling work and so I'd suggest that being a spoil sport is absolutely not the way to encourage good cave conservation. However, start sculpting anything with the clay in places such as Agen Allwedd Main Passage, where the sediments are not only important for future sampling work but also have an aesthetic quality in their own right, then expect to be duly reprimanded!
As for clay balls, that's how we disposed of the mud dug out the passage at The Armoury in Trident Passage, Agen Allwedd, to enable the next breakthrough, if you can find them.
And as for throwing mud around in a muddy part of a cave where water regularly inundates the passage - what's the point in introducing draconian 'do as I say' regulations where the situation and reasonableness suggest otherwise? There is a recording somewhere of three women having somewhat of a mud fight in a muddy section of cave passage, somewhere, and it went out on
Woman's Hour on BBC Radio! I was there when it happened and saw them do it of their own volition and can vouch that there was no danger to the cave or 'cave formations'. Just don't get it in your eyes, that's all!
I was also there when Mark Noel did his sampling work, in fact I drove him to South Wales on a number of occasions around the time this experimentation was carried out, and so I can suggest that it is well worth taking cave sediments seriously and helping to protect areas that have been marked out for conservation purposes or simply
appear that they should be protected,
using your own common sense and initiative.
See:
Discovering Cave Sediments by Laurence Thistlewood in
Caves & Caving (90), Spring/Summer 2001, pp.20-3:
http://bcra.org.uk/pub/candc/v90.html
I commissioned the piece.