How many cavers?

[BrianC]

After some thoughts expressed that cavers should respond to some of the closure orders due to White Nose Syndrome, I wonder how many cavers are actually out there?. I know that many attendees at grotto meetings are not NSS or of any cave affiliation members. I know that many SCCI and ACA members are not NSS members.There are many members and readers of Cave Chat that do not pay membership to the NSS. Is there any way to find out some sort of number of cavers in the USA.?

[ON_ROPE]

Registration data going back to 1980 show a rather standard percentage of cavers entering Pettyjohns cave in Georgia are NSS members. Current data show ten thousand cavers a year and slightly less than 20 percent are NSS. Do the math.

[BrianC]

Registration data going back to 1980 show a rather standard percentage of cavers entering Pettyjohns cave in Georgia are NSS members. Current data show ten thousand cavers a year and slightly less than 20 percent are NSS. Do the math.

Exactly the Numbers I am looking for. Thanks very much. 8000 non NSS/2000 NSS.
Any others?

[trogman]

Wow! 10,000 people a year visit Pettijohns?! And that's just the number of people that actually register. I'm sure the actual number is even higher.
I imagine some of those are repeat visitors; meaning, they go to PJ more than once a year. It's kind of hard to extrapolate from that number to figure how many cavers in the country, though. I guess you could assume that the 20/80 ratio holds true for the rest of the country, and since there are ~10,000 NSS members, one could assume that there are around 40,000 non-NSS cavers, for a total of 50,000.

Trogman

[BrianC]

Wow! 10,000 people a year visit Pettijohns?! And that's just the number of people that actually register. I'm sure the actual number is even higher.
I imagine some of those are repeat visitors; meaning, they go to PJ more than once a year. It's kind of hard to extrapolate from that number to figure how many cavers in the country, though. I guess you could assume that the 20/80 ratio holds true for the rest of the country, and since there are ~10,000 NSS members, one could assume that there are around 40,000 non-NSS cavers, for a total of 50,000.

Trogman

That reasoning is good, except that this is for the middle of TAG, I would surmise that local cavers everywhere would make up a much larger number than 40K of non NSS members.