by hewhocaves » Jul 12, 2006 3:53 pm
I can't think of anyplace where info about rescues caused other rescues (J-4 is so well known, I doubt you could argue causal relationships).
However, you can find cases of *negative impact* ranging from deteriorated landowner raletionships to formation removal. There's a few Jersey caves which fall into that category - mostly within the past 20 years.
I think we can argue an extrapolation into a future where this sort of thing (negative impact) increases over time.
My point is that as a community we have been more or less successful in mitigating a lot of the problems through smart management. Take Bowden, for example. (apologies to those who have never been). it's realtively harmless - moreso now that it's been split off. It'd be difficult to really screw up in that cave. Hellhole, on the other hand is gated and fenced and (i haven't been there recently, so I'm not sure) there may be a moat and land mines.
And then sometimes I can't explain spelunkers' luck. Leigh Cave in NJ has a 20' pit right inside the entrance. You would think that when the cave was not gated there would be rescues every week from the kids drinking in the cave. But I think the only rescue we had at Leigh was during an NCRC class (and what better time!)
The point is that while rescues tend to punctuate bad relations, what really does them in are the unwashed masses visiting at all hours, parking ewverywhere, leaving litter and farm gates open and what not. A lot of that comes from publicity and one of the great places for publicity is the newspaper. And it's all been raised an order of magnitude by the internet.
john
The NSS and WNS: Cooperation, not confrontation.