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.

Dr. Fred Luiszer of the University of Colorado in Glenwood Canyon's Cave of the Clouds, once home to a major bat colony. (Richard Rhinehart photograph, copyright 2006.)

The Huntsville, Alabama-based Society, chartered in 1941, is one of the largest cave exploration, science and conservation organizations in the world. With members in every state, the Society has unique resources available to federal, state and local agencies and land managers to investigate and combat the continued spread of the Syndrome.

With active Memorandums of Understanding already in place between the Society and the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Society and its membership has increasingly found itself identified by these agencies as a primary source of transmission of the fungus to uninfected bats in the eastern United States. Although research indicates that bat-to-bat transmission is probably a major source of transmission, and human transmission a secondary source, many bat biologists and federal and state land managers incorrectly believe human transmission is the only vector.

In its March 1 press release, the Society calls upon focusing strategies, resources and research on the primary source of transmission – bat to bat.

The Society also recommends working with private cave conservancies across the country to assist with monitoring of their caves and bats, targeting cave closures to priority bat roosting sites and adapting scientifically-sound cleaning and decontamination procedures for visitors to caves, both for casual visitors and scientific researchers.

Noting that Society cavers have been “at the forefront” of identifying and studying White-Nose Syndrome since it was first noticed in 2006, the Society’s President, Gordon Birkhimer, states cavers “bring a lot to the table – nearly 70 years of cave resource conservation experience.” Working together with agencies and groups that have cooperatively worked with the Society on a variety of projects these last seven decades simply is good common sense.

The National Speleological Society maintains one of the most complete and informative online resources on White Nose Syndrome, updated regularly with new reports.

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.”

Important bat habitats like the Elephant Mountain Mines and Caves in Colorado are monitored by the Colorado Division of Wildlife. (Richard Rhinehart photograph, copyright 2005.)

Announced in the Budget Justifications and Performance Information for Fiscal Year 2011 for the United States Department of the Interior, the $500,000 granted by the Congress for White Nose Syndrome studies in Fiscal Year 2010 will not be requested again. The report states:

Monitoring for White Nose Syndrome (WNS) in Bats (-$1,900,000/+0 FTE) In FY 2010, Congress provided $500,000 in unrequested funding targeted for surveying, sampling, and diagnostics needed to monitor the spread of white nose syndrome (WNS) disease, as well as developing and utilizing a comprehensive electronic format for the data management required for the collection and maintenance of the information. The WNS has primarily affected bats in the northeast, but experts believe that the disease will spread to the very diverse, high density bat population areas in the Midwest and Southeast. The Service has been working with conservation partners throughout the country to address the cause and spread of this disease. The Service proposes to discontinue this unrequested funding in FY 2011 in order to fund higher priority conservation activities elsewhere in the budget request. In addition to these earmarked appropriations, WNS related projects are being funded through grant opportunities, funding provided by our conservation partners, and other Service funds such as the Preventing Extinction initiative.

National Speleological Society White Nose Syndrome Liaison Peter Youngbaer reports also that the $1.9 million appropriated by Congress for 2010 has yet to be used by US Fish & Wildlife. About $1 million in appropriated funds will be applied to research, with the remaining $.9 million used to support internal staffing and coordination with state wildlife and management agencies.

According to Youngbaer, the “higher priority” tasks for US Fish & Wildlife will be in alternative energy consultation, such as the installation of wind turbines and their affect on area wildlife.

Meanwhile, biologists in Pennsylvania have discovered additional bat colonies have become infected this year with the White Nose Syndrome fungus. Mortality rates in infected colonies have been found to be from 95 to 100 percent.

Cavers and rescue personnel from throughout Colorado and the Rocky Mountain West are encouraged to attend the April 10-11, 2010 Cave Rescue Seminar at Colorado Springs. The seminar includes a full day Saturday classroom and exercise session at the Pikes Peak Regional Building Department and a full day mock rescue in one or more of the limestone caves of Williams Canyon, near the commercial Cave of the Winds.

Cavers transport the "victim" during the April 2006 mock rescue in Colorado's Huccacove Cave. (Rick Meyers photograph, copyright 2006.)

Registration for the seminar is currently underway. The fee is $30 for registrations received by April 1, and $35 for registrations received thereafter. The fee includes class materials, coffee and donuts. Meals and lodging is the responsibility of the seminar participants.

The Seminar is sponsored by the Colorado Cave Rescue Network and the Cave of the Winds. Previous seminars have held mock rescues in historic Huccacove Cave, though seminar organizers hint another canyon cave or caves might be used for the 2010 seminar.

The weekend seminar begins with classroom sessions and hands-on practice sessions using obstacle courses. On Sunday, seminar participants arrive at the Cave of the Winds early in the morning, ready for a day of underground training. The session is treated much like a real cave rescue, with teams searching for lost and injured cavers, medical personnel monitoring “victims,” rescue personnel transport the mock victims from the cave and media personnel work with the local media.

In April 2006, the seminar training in Colorado Springs attracted 66 students for the Saturday classroom session and over 50 students in the mock rescue.

In 2008, the training seminar was held at Glenwood Caverns in west central Colorado.

The Colorado Cave Rescue Network is an organization of cavers who have joined together to act as a resource in cave emergencies and to manage cave rescue training in Colorado. It is the largest cave rescue group in the five-state Rocky Mountain Region of the National Speleological Society.

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, filed an emergency petition with the Departments of Interior, Agriculture and Defense to close all caves and mines until science can prove that humans are not a vector for transmitting the pathogen that causes White Nose Syndrome among bats. The fungus has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of bats in the last few years since it was first noticed in bats in New York’s commercial Howe Caverns.

Colorado's popular Hubbard Cave, managed by the White River National Forest, would be closed to all visits under the proposal. (Richard Rhinehart photograph, copyright 2005.)

The petition formally requests that the Departments of Interior, Agriculture and Defense designate all caves with at least seasonal bat populations on federal lands – US Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, and US Fish and Wildlife Service – as significant under the terms of the Federal Cave Resources Protection Act, a Reagan-era law designed by Congress to protect the most significant caves in the nation. Once designated, the federal agencies would be directed to close these caves to the public, and to undertake a gating process to place gates on the cave entrances.

The petition also requests that the Fish and Wildlife Service notify all private cave owners within the United States that they may be subject to criminal penalties under the federal Endangered Species Act. By not gating their caves and eliminating all access to human visitors, the owners could be subject to fines and/or prison terms. Cave visitors discovered by law enforcement to be traveling to or from caves with known bat populations could also be arrested for violating the Endangered Species Act.

In addition, the Center’s petition requests that the federal government immediately begin purchasing and closing all privately known caves and mines known to have at least seasonal bat populations. No exemptions are provided for commercial cave operations, such as Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave, Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico or Colorado’s Cave of the Winds. Each of these caves would be required to cease commercial operations and close indefinitely to any human visitation.

Mollie Matteson, a University of Montana biology graduate and conservation advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity, works at the organization’s Vermont office. She has been passionately involved with the protection of bats since the pathogen became known to biologists in 2007. Bat populations in Vermont and surrounding states have been decimated by the spread of the White Nose Syndrome pathogen, and Matteson has led the Center’s efforts to protect bats nationally from possible extinction. She researched and created the petition for the Center.

With more than 255,000 members nationally, the Center is actively involved in litigation in protecting plant and animal species within the United States and across the world. Founded in 1989, the Center has a reputation as a hard-charging fighter for environmental protection, taking on everyone who opposes their view. Founder Kierán Suckling was called by The New Yorker as a “trickster, philosopher, publicity hound, master strategist, and unapologetic pain in the ass.” This is a group who will not hesitate to litigate when they see the opportunity to do so.

Wildlife biologist Ann Kreager counts herself as one of those who greatly admire the Center.  She reports that “we professional biologists working inside the industry were grateful for their efforts [in California and elsewhere], especially since politics typically trumped science, limiting our ability to work within the regulatory framework. Their staff is comprised of excellent and dedicated biologists and attorneys who aren’t compromised by special interest groups or big money and their petitions have always been extremely well researched and supported by fact.”

Others, such as the National Speleological Society’s White Nose Syndrome Coordinator Peter Youngbaer, are less complimentary of the Center and their petition to close all caves and mines harboring bats. Stating that “cave conservation would be dealt a serious setback by these outrageous proposals,” Youngbaer states directly that Matteson’s proposed actions by the federal government would be “reckless, dangerous, ill-advised, [and] divisive.”

“What they are calling for would destroy cave and bat conservation, as the rule would prohibit any visitation, including by researchers and conservationists, close commercial caves, and wreak economic havoc. It would result in a complete halt of scientific and academic study in caves in a variety of sciences including geology, archaeology, hydrology, microbiology, paleontology, and biology,” reports Youngbaer. “It’s too bad such so-called environmental leadership feels it necessary to publicly display its ignorance about the transmission of White Nose Syndrome, bats, caves, and subterranean ecosystems in order to advance its narrow agenda. Frankly, it’s an embarrassment to their organization, and the people responsible for it should be fired, and a public apology issued.”

Kreager reports that the filing of the petition has legal responsibilities by the federal government. In formally filing the document, the US Fish and Wildlife Service must “determine whether existing impacts are sufficient to threaten a species with extinction. The Service by law then has to open the case and weigh all relevant scientific data, including that which was submitted with the petitions. If the data substantiates closure, then the Service has the information it needs to move forward. If the Service finds the information is insufficient or does NOT jeopardize the species, then they may determine no action is necessary or some other mitigation will be required.”

For cavers and cave scientists nationally, the Center’s petition is being taken as a serious challenge that will affect not only caving and cave science, but also the national economy, if litigation is successful in closing public and private caves, including commercial caves. Youngbaer advises the 11,000 National Speleological Society that “CBD has a large cadre of lawyers, and is quite adept at using the legal system, Freedom of Information Act and other tools to advance its agenda, so don’t dismiss this as simply being over the top, as it clearly is.”

Scenic Deep Creek Canyon northwest of Dotsero is administered by the Bureau of Land Managment and White River National Forest. (Richard Rhinehart photograph, copyright 2007)

One of Colorado’s most scenic and wild canyons is among the 34 areas proposed as federal wilderness in the Colorado Wilderness Act of 2009 bill introduced December 11 by Congresswoman Diana DeGette (D-Denver).

Deep Creek Canyon, a 2,000-foot-deep limestone, sandstone and quartzite gorge leading west from the Colorado River north of the tiny community of Dotsero, has been proposed before as wilderness. Administered by the White River National Forest and the Glenwood Springs office of the Bureau of Land Management, the canyon is so rugged that no passable trail leads from its headwaters at Deep Lake to the mouth of the canyon at the Colorado River. At the hairpin curve of the Coffee Pot Road as it begins climbing out of the canyon, an unimproved trail leads along the canyon floor for about two miles. Popular with fishermen, hunters and hikers, the trail is unofficial – the BLM hasn’t built a bridge across the creek from the trailhead, requiring visitors to wade the icy stream or find fallen logs to safely cross.

For cavers, Deep Creek Canyon is one of the most popular cave regions in the state, with several nationally-significant wild caves, including Colorado’s longest known cave, Groaning Cave, with 12 miles of surveyed passage. Access to these caves is rugged and challenging, requiring lengthy hikes, rappels on cliffs and scrambling along narrow ledges.

Designation of the canyon as an official federal wilderness area will probably bring additional attention to the canyon, much like the designation of the Indian Peaks Wilderness west of Boulder increased visitors to that popular high alpine wilderness. But, the additional federal protection provided to the canyon is worth the increased exposure to outdoor enthusiasts.

Since the 1880s, when Deep Creek Canyon and the entire White River Plateau north and west to Meeker was proposed as a national park by the Colorado State Legislature, Deep Creek has been pressured by development. In the 1960s, the canyon was studied as a possible route for Interstate Highway 70, in an attempt to avoid narrow Glenwood Canyon to the south. In the 1970s, Colorado Fuel & Iron proposed a mammoth limestone quarry on the south rim, with large mechanical conveyors transporting rock to a railroad loading station along the Colorado River to the east. This decade, The Wilderness Ranch, on the site of the proposed CF&I quarry, sold to developers for $5.9 million. Perhaps owing to the economic recession, the property is again on the market through a prestigious Vail real estate firm, this time for $12 million.

Though legislators have previously proposed the canyon as a designated wilderness, wild and scenic river, or primitive area, the Colorado Wilderness Act of 2009 significantly expands the boundaries to include 20,843 acres, including the lands immediately above the canyon rims. This effectively includes all of the major caves of the canyon.

Wilderness designation for this spectacular canyon should be of interest for all cavers and outdoor enthusiasts.  In 1889, Colorado Springs mining investor Louis R. Ehrich, a strong supporter of the proposed Colorado National Park, wrote an impassioned plea for federal protection for Deep Creek Canyon and the White River Plateau in the May-October 1889 edition of the Magazine of Western History.

“Posteritism demands the creation of this National Park. In fancy the voices of millions yet unborn calling to us from the womb of time to protect this masterpiece of Nature, this vast pleasure ground intact and undefiled for their enjoyment and their benefit.”

A view of the Wanlass Hill region from Gardison Ridge, west of Provo, Utah. (Richard Rhinehart photograph, copyright 2005.)

The Allen’s Ranch area west of Provo is a lonely, windswept region. Criss-crossed by ranch roads, the valley east of Gardison Ridge is mostly dry ranch land, with higher ridges ringing the basin.

Caves have been long known to be found on these ridges, with the most popular being Nutty Putty Cave, a 1,355-foot-long cave in the Gardner Dolomite. Since its discovery by master Salt Lake City cave hunter Dale Green in 1961, Nutty Putty grew in popularity to become Utah’s most popular wild cave, with 5,000 or more people exploring its passageways and chambers during its peak in popularity. In recent years, the Rocky Mountain Region of the National Speleological Society donated $1000 of its funds to help the Timpanogos Grotto install a gate to protect the cave from vandals who would want to do it harm, but also from inexperienced cavers who are tempted by numerous small, sinuous crawls and squeezeways that comprise the cave’s southern branch.

Sadly, Nutty Putty Cave is also the grave of 26-year-old Utah caver John Jones, who explored an unsurveyed side passage near Ed’s Push and never returned. In a well-publicized rescue attempt of November 24-25, 2009, volunteer cavers from the Utah grottos and rescue teams from several search and rescue groups tried their best to safely extract John from the exceptionally tight passage that would become his tomb. To their anguish, the rescuers failed at their task, leaving John alone in the depths of this once popular but now strangely quiet cave.

While discussions continue both in Utah and across the nation as to whether John should be left in the cave and the entrance sealed, or if every effort should be made to extract his body for a traditional burial, the longer term issue is to what cavers within the Rocky Mountain Region can do in the future to prevent another underground tragedy.

In Colorado, the Colorado Cave Rescue Network has worked long and hard to create a skilled volunteer organization of cavers who can help with any cave emergency that might arise within the state. By contacting Colorado search and rescue teams, and sheriff’s offices in cave-rich regions of the state, it is a certainty that any rescue in Colorado’s future will involve cavers from this team, even if non-National Speleological Society cavers may not know of the Network. In other adjacent states, however, it is less certain that trained cavers will be contacted by the commanding sheriff’s office in an underground emergency.

Steve Reames, one of the founders of the Colorado Cave Rescue Network, explains that in all outdoor rescue emergencies, the county sheriff’s office serves as the commander of all rescue operations. They may decide to defer incident management to a search and rescue team, but ultimately, the sheriff is charged with the task of managing a rescue. For Nutty Putty Cave, the Utah County Sheriff’s office was in command of the rescue operation, but according to Dale Green, they deferred underground operation management to the group of cavers who had experience in cave rescues.

Though Nutty Putty Cave is only a short drive from major cities like Provo and Salt Lake City, many of our Rocky Mountain Region’s caves are in remote regions, like Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains, Colorado’s San Juan Mountains and the wilderness regions of Montana. In many of these regions, very few cavers can be found. Even less likely is that the local sheriff’s office is aware of cave rescue organizations like Colorado’s well trained team.

In the hope that future tragedies might be averted, it would be worthwhile for the Colorado Cave Rescue Network to reach out to Society chapters in our Region, providing contact information and an assurance that if an emergency arises, Colorado cavers are only a phone call away. In addition, local sheriff’s offices in cave areas of the Rocky Mountain Region might be contacted proactively and provided with contact information.

For the Rocky Mountain Region, South Dakota caver Marc Ohms serves as the volunteer coordinator of the National Cave Rescue Commission. An expert caver who works as a professional with the National Park Service, Marc also volunteers his time in helping arrange cave rescue training for teams such as Teton County Search and Rescue.  With a huge geographic region to oversee, Marc simply doesn’t have the time to alert every grotto and every sheriff’s office of the services available to them by organized cave rescue teams like Colorado’s. Yet, he will readily welcome help from other regional cavers who will evangelize the availability of trained underground rescue assistance.

With enough regional cavers providing volunteer assistance, each and every cave region sheriff’s office can be provided with contact information for Marc, and for existing groups. Additional rescue training seminars can be arranged throughout the region, providing more cavers, and more search and rescue personnel, with specialized training.

Let’s remember the legacy of Nutty Putty Cave in a sense that the tragedy that met John Jones will not be forgotten. Perhaps in some future rescue, individuals motivated through John’s death underground will help save another life.

On July 20, 1969, while the world watched breathlessly the coverage of the Apollo 11 moon landing in the Sea of Tranquility, Colorado cavers were exploring another frontier here on planet Earth.

In Colorado’s Groaning Cave, cavers from the Colorado, Colorado School of Mines and Colorado State University chapters of the National Speleological Society were busy underground. Teams of cavers were exploring and surveying the state’s most recent discovery on the White River Plateau north of Glenwood Springs.

While survey teams measured and sketched the cave passages beyond the CSU Passage, Donald G. Davis and Debbie Stucklen explored past the surveyors, squeezing through tight and dusty crawlways until they came into a mammoth new corridor that had never before been seen or explored. Carefully, Donald and Debbie walked down this undiscovered country, which they named “Tranquility Hall” in favor of the events happening that day.

From Tranquility Hall, Donald and Debbie continued their exploration of the sparkling gypsum-filled crawlways leading deeper into the mountain. Soon, they came into the second big discovery of the day, which they named Serenity Hall, in honor of the future landing site of Apollo 17, the Sea of Serenity.

Later that summer, Donald Davis made his epic exploration of Groaning Cave, discovering thousands of feet of corridors, chambers and crawlways that led far beyond Serenity Hall, to the Hall of the White Forest, Submarine Boulevard and the Conning Tower. To date, Donald’s day of discovery remains one of the most impressive solo explorations in Colorado caving history.

Denver’s 5280 Magazine reports in its July 2009 edition the sensationalistic story of old gold and human skeletons in Colorado’s Spanish Cave. The feature article, by Boulder outdoor author Peter Bronski, tells of a recent visit to the high altitude Sangre de Cristo Mountains cave with members of the Northern Colorado Grotto of the National Speleological Society. During this trip, the team visited much of the known cave system but sadly saw no indication of 15th century Spanish Conquistadors and gold mined by Native American slaves. Indeed, no trip to the cave in the last 90 years has seen any indication that the cave once was a Spanish gold mine.

Denver cave historian Donald G. Davis is a veteran Colorado caver, and a man who has been involved in many Western American cave discoveries, from New Mexico to Colorado to Montana. In the early 1960s, as a young caver seeking approval from the “establishment” Colorado Grotto members in Denver, Donald and other cavers from Colorado State University made several major discoveries in Spanish Cave, greatly expanding the scientific knowledge of this important Colorado cave. Yet, his teams and hundreds of other cavers who have visited the cave in the four decades since have failed to find a single piece of evidence indicating the cave was visited 400 years ago by anyone, much less Spanish Conquistadors. Unfortunately, through sensationalistic articles published in publications such as Denver’s 5280 Magazine, rumors of old gold and skeletons persist – not so much because the stories are true, but because they are good stories helpful in selling subscriptions and single copies at newsstands.

Donald Davis is a prolific writer and distinguished cave historian. During the 1960s and 1970s, Donald extensively researched the history of Spanish Cave and found it dates back to only the late 19th century, when residents of the Wet Mountain Valley began exploring the region, mostly for recreation, but also for valuable mineral deposits. It appears that the stories of old gold and skeletons date back only to the late 1910s and early 1920s, when Denver’s two major newspapers, The Denver Post, and the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News, were engaged in a newspaper war to gain paid subscriptions at the expense of the other. Like many other stories of the time, the stories of the “legends” of “La Caverna del Oro” were developed by clever newspaper men seeking to freely mine the gold from reader’s pockets, rather than by journalists who researched news for the truth.

Though the golden era of “yellow” journalism is long gone, it appears the need to sell magazines no matter the truth of the included content continues to this day. Peter Bronski’s “Golden Opportunity” is the most recent example regarding caves.

Colorado cavers learned May 20 that the owners of the Orient Mine in the San Luis Valley of south central Colorado have decided to close the Orient Mine and caves owing to concerns regarding the spread of White Nose Syndrome. The mine and cave will be closed for public visitation during all of 2009.

The historic Orient Mine contains Colorado’s largest known bat colony. An estimated 100,000 to 250,000 Mexican free-tail bats spend their summers in the former iron mine. The mine intersects several natural cave passages in the Mississippian-age Leadville Limestone.

White Nose Syndrome has affected many bats in the northeastern United States, killing more than 95 percent of the affected hibernating bats in New York and Vermont. In the last two years, the fungus has been documented in other northeastern states, including Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia. Federal authorities are taking the unusual step of closing all public caves, excepting commercial caves, in most of the eastern United States in an attempt to limit the spread of the fungus. This closure order has spread west of the Mississippi River, to Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma.  Privately-owned caves are not included in the closure, though authorities are encouraging private land owners to also close their caves to visitation.

Biologist Peter Youngbaer, the National Speleological Society White Nose Syndrome Liaison, reports that fears of the devastation of the Syndrome are real. He writes:

Having watched it ravage our northeastern hibernacula over the past two years, I can related to those people in newly-affected areas, such as the Virginias, who are just realizing that this is going to wreak havoc with their caving.  Out West, WNS is only on the margins of consciousness, but that is about to change big time.

Shane Briggs and Kirk Navo, the bat specialists for the Colorado Division of Wildlife, were unaware of the Orient Mine closure until I contacted them. Shane previously had reported in late April that federal and state authorities in Colorado and the Rocky Mountain West were monitoring White Nose Syndrome, but there were no plans or even discussions to close caves or mines in the region.

Kirk Navo contacted the Orient Land Trust on May 22 and confirmed the closure of the mine and caves. This is the first cave closure in Colorado and the Rocky Mountain West owing to WNS. The Land Trust posted the closure to their Facebook page on May 24.

Cavers in the eastern United States are facing an interesting dilemma. In many eastern states, cavers are deciding if they should respect wide cave closure orders from the federal government put in place to protect bats from the possible spread of the White Nose Syndrome, or if they should go caving and face a stiff fine and even a jail term.

Federal authorities in Missouri’s Mark Twain National Forest decided a pre-emptive closure of the forest’s more than 600 caves was in order, following similar closures in Indiana and Illinois. Although confirmed cases of White Nose Syndrome are not closer than Virginia and West Virginia, concerned bat biologists in federal lands in states across the continent are deciding to close wild, undeveloped caves for a year or longer. In Missouri, visitors to federal caves in the Mark Twain National Forest can be fined up to $5,000 or face six months in a federal prison.

The closure order applies only to federal caves, however, and does not include privately-owned or state-owned caves. Commercial caves are also exempt from the closure.

In Colorado, state and federal biologists are monitoring the ongoing studies of White Nose Syndrome, but have no plans to close caves anytime soon. Shane Briggs, the Colorado Division of Wildlife Conservation Programs Supervisor, reported April 27 that he is not aware of “any discussions or proposals to close caves in the west at this time.”