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The three caves where bats with the disease were found are Bat, Saltpetre and Laurel Caves, which were closed in 2008 as part of the effort to stop the spread of the fungus causing the disease.
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Here's the most updated WNS map:
Crockett wrote:Thanks Peter for emphatically stating that cave closures for WNS are bad management. I'll do it too. Cave closures for WNS are bad management. Any cave managers tuned in? Wake up.
Cavemud wrote:Crockett wrote:Thanks Peter for emphatically stating that cave closures for WNS are bad management. I'll do it too. Cave closures for WNS are bad management. Any cave managers tuned in? Wake up.
As I've been saying since the start of Mother Nature's bat smack!
Crockett wrote:I guess I have some perverse sense of ownership regarding caves on Pine Mountain so I'll pop off about management policies in this forum topic but it's not like I think my opinion will really make any difference. Closing caves for WNS as a blanket management strategy has been a refuge for the ignorant and/or fearful. Some public land managers have taken a different approach, allowing reasonable entry and using that to establish more baseline data and generally monitor and protect caves. Many "closed" caves have been open by permit for defined purposes and many cavers have quietly taken advantage. Some managers have encouraged and facilitated permitted entry. The closed cave lists are for those cavers who can't find a more sophisticated way to recreate and get themselves in...but some caves and cave areas should just be open or at least not closed just because of WNS.
Green Cave is arguably the most important bat cave in Kentucky and it is not managed at all, yet there live all those bats, without the benefit of a manager or a closure or the oversight of a gigantic government bureaucracy.
I think USFW should throw money at the NSS and beg for widespread comprehensive cave monitoring programs, putting cavers into caves doing speleology...but I know that hoping for support for a volunteer citizen based nonprofit interest group solution is futile, they will continue to send money over to the lawyers who sue them for a living because they live and die by the regulatory sword.
So you haven't heard much from me about cave closures because I don't like to waste my time but I will take time to express my opinion upon the bat plague arriving at my home...it's probably the frustration and grief over the loss.
On the same line, Mammoth Cave National Park no longer requires visitors to splash through the boot bath on the way into the cave. This was supposed to help prevent WNS. Seems all the disinfectant used to de-con was being tracked into the cave and doing harm to all the other biota in the cave.
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