Page 1 of 1

Cave Management Plans?

PostPosted: Jan 17, 2013 1:39 pm
by struebe
Hi all - I'm looking for advice and examples for developing a Cave Management Plan for our caves on USFS land in Arizona (not that we have any to speak of, of course). If you have experience writing these, or examples from your region, please let me know! I'm not sure if you can do attachments to a private message, but I'll give out my email if you contact me about successes/failures you've had in your region.

And yes, it's supposed to the the USFS local office's job to develop a cave management plan...but it's not happening, so a group of us decided we'd help move the process along. Thanks!

Re: Cave Management Plans?

PostPosted: Jan 17, 2013 1:54 pm
by cavergirl
you might contact the SCCi (Southeastern Cave Conservancy, Inc)
http://www.scci.org/ContactUs/contact.html

Re: Cave Management Plans?

PostPosted: Jan 17, 2013 6:23 pm
by wyandottecaver
struebe,

I take it you are a private group trying to do the legwork of writing a plan for your local agency?

The Hoosier NF has lots of experiance writing Cave Management Plans for their resources and the USFS actually has a national cave coordinator Cynthia Sandeno who used to be at the Hoosier and could also probably give you some good examples.

Scci and other private cave conservancies write excellent management plans but managing cave resources for a State or Federal Agency is a whole different animal so don't expect a plan written in that format to be directly helpful beyond giving you some ideas for things to consider.

*edit* Struebe, I also forgot to say (you probably know) that a general karst resources plan will differ greatly from a specific cave plan and a cave plan for say Lech or will not look anything like one for some piddling little hole with no known features of note.

Re: Cave Management Plans?

PostPosted: Jan 18, 2013 1:04 pm
by caverdan
Colorado Cave Survey has a management plan and MOU with the USFS for Groaning cave. You might try contacting someone from that group. Here is a link to their website. Good Luck.......your going to need it if your dealing with the USFS. :argue:

http://www.coloradocavesurvey.org/index.html

Re: Cave Management Plans?

PostPosted: Jan 18, 2013 1:06 pm
by struebe
Oh, righto, we're just the AZ Region and assorted grottos trying to do this because the USFS doesn't want to. And yes, you bring up a good point that cave management plans for each area will be wildly different - I'm hoping by seeing a number of them, I will get an idea of what is supposed to be included--I do have some examples from Cynthia Sandano (via another person, so it might be worth it for me to contact her directly as well), and I will get in touch with SCCI anyway, as they might have some ideas as to what to include/not include. Thanks for the suggestions - keep them coming!!

Re: Cave Management Plans?

PostPosted: Jan 18, 2013 2:34 pm
by PYoungbaer
struebe,

The Northeastern Cave Conservancy, cousin of SCCi, has management plans for our cave preserves on the NCC website: http://www.necaveconservancy.org. Click on the Preserves tab, and then each preserver has its own management plan. You can see how different caves and preserves have different needs.

The NCC page also has a management plan template in its Board Manual. You can link to that by clicking on the About tab, then clicking on the Board Manual on the left hand menu. The template is on pages 57 and 58.