BY RICHARD RHINEHART Denver, Colo., November 16, 2012 – The US Forest Service regional office in Golden, Colorado is seeking comments from the public in their ongoing evaluation of the cave and abandoned mine closure policy for public caves in Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, most of South Dakota and most of Wyoming. The current closure order, [...]
Breaking from the blanket closure policies of the United States Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management Renewable Resources and Planning Office in Washington has directed state offices to take the lead in determining if targeted cave and non-active mine closures are advantageous to protecting bats from the spread of the Geomyces destructans pathogen. The [...]
Mindful of past inaction that may have resulted in the unintended spread of the White Nose Syndrome fungus to additional caves and inactive mines on federal property in the eastern United States, Deputy Regional Forester Tony Dixon’s bold July 27 order to immediately close entry to thousands of caves and mines in the five state [...]
President Abraham Lincoln, in his First Inaugural Address on March 4, 1861, appealed to a country facing an impassable division that would ultimately result in Civil War. He plead to his countrymen for reason and caution and to not allow passions of the day to rule: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not [...]
Although US Forest Service officials seem all but certain to issue a blanket cave closure order for all caves and inactive mines on Forest lands in the Rocky Mountain region owing to concerns about the spread of the White Nose Syndrome fungus, Colorado’s three commercially-operated caves will remain open for business. Cave of the Winds [...]
Colorado cavers have been notified that all Colorado, South Dakota and most Wyoming caves with the US Forest Service will be closed the week of July 12, 2010 owing to the presence of the White Nose Syndrome fungus in a state-owned cave in west-central Oklahoma. Here is the official Colorado Cave Survey notification from chair [...]
Throughout the eastern United States, federal and state land owners have adapted the dramatic step of closing all public caves to visitation in a determined effort to slow the spread of the fungus that leads to White Nose Syndrome among bats. Since first identified in February 2006, the WNS pathogen has spread from New York [...]
Recognizing that cooperation and consultation is the best tool in combating the spread of the devastating White-Nose Syndrome among bats, the National Speleological Society today offered to several federal agencies the assistance of more than 11,000 members nationally. The Huntsville, Alabama-based Society, chartered in 1941, is one of the largest cave exploration, science and conservation [...]
The federal Department of the Interior’s US Fish and Wildlife Service has announced they are dropping funding of monitoring the spread of the devastating White Nose Syndrome among bats in Fiscal Year 2011. Under a new budget proposed by President Obama’s administration, US Fish and Wildlife will devote resources to “higher priority conservation activities.” Announced [...]
Concerned with the spread of White Nose Syndrome among bat species in the northeastern United States, a powerful non-profit environmental lobbying group filed a petition with the federal government January 21 to close to humans all caves in the country known to harbor bats. The Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, through its Richmond, Vermont office, [...]