As I've said before, some caves may need closing but most don't. And closing them ALL on government land is blatant lack of a management plan.
The vast majority of the caves in the Mountain West don't have a specific management plan. The area that these gov. agencies are managing are huge and with many competing interests such as: Oil & Gas, Coal & Mineral Development, Environmentalism, ATV's/ORV's, hunting & fishing, the list continues; thus the caves end up in the backseat because of the understaffed and money starved agencies.
Hopefully, in Montana, there won't be a blatant closing of all government owned caves.
God lets hope not, 99.9% of the caves are on government land in the mountain west. I can think of 4 caves on private land here in Wyoming (If you count the Indian Reservation) and Rick would have to fill the amount for Montana, but I know it is only a handful. For those that don't know Mystery Cave is very close to the Wyoming boarder, thus the flight path and range of the Townsend Long-eared is most of the Bighorns Mt. in Wyoming. When I was talking to the BLM, the cave lead expressed the sheer impossibility of being able to close and force a closer on the caves in the Bighorn Basin. The BLM has one law enforcement officer for that area which is 3437.5 mi²/2.2 million acres aka an area twice the size of the state of Rhode Island.
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