This is essentially what happened here in
Virginia. Initially there was a knee-jerk, blanket ban on caving,
but then people realized that cavers were the eyes and ears on and
under the ground that provided real-time info on how the bats were
doing. The policy soon changed to allowing caving with decon. That
was true for everyone but the feds; the USFWS never relaxed their
caving ban. My guess is that they won't do so any time soon - they
are the most remote from cavers and the most
impenetrable. Fortunately for us that affects relatively few of the
caves most of us visit regularly.
Mark Minton
At 11:56 AM 8/9/2010, Andy Gluesenkamp wrote:
About all I can come up with is that we need to "deputize" the Texas
caving community to help us document and monitor bat
populations. This is has been my mantra in every internal WNS
meeting here at TPWD. That is more-or-less the opposite of closing
caves and is an opinion shared by other members of the WNS
team. Unfortunately, folks want to seize on the idea that "The Man"
is blindly seeking to take away their caving priviledges. Not the
case here in TX.
Andrew G. Gluesenkamp, Ph.D.
700 Billie Brooks Drive
Driftwood, Texas 78619
(512) 799-1095
a...@gluesenkamp.com
--- On Mon, 8/9/10, Mark Minton <mmin...@caver.net> wrote:
Agencies do it because they feel like they have to do _something_,
and at the moment that's about all they can come up with. :-(
Please reply to mmin...@caver.net
Permanent email address is mmin...@illinoisalumni.org
