By Rick Stiebel
News staff
May 18 2007
Cave experts keeping close eye on Canadian project
Cave experts and enthusiasts from around the world hope Langford can change the routing of a proposed interchange to protect a nearby cave.
In a May 8 response to an April 25 letter from Vancouver Island Exploration Group president Adrian Duncan, Langford clerk administrator Rob Buchan said the City has determined that Langford Lake cave is located within the proposed alignment of the Spencer Road interchange access ramp, and thanked Duncan for drawing attention to that.
Victoria is one of the few, if not only, provincial capitals that has karst, or limestone caves — a type that forms from the flow of water through fissures and cracks — within its boundaries.
“At one time, there were more than 20 known caves in the Victoria area and now we’re down to nine,” Duncan said in a telephone interview from Coquitlam. “We’ve lost over half the ones that existed through development.”
Vancouver Island’s unique landscape has a reputation that draws attention from cave enthusiasts from all over the world, Duncan said.
He pointed out that the recent destruction of Spaet Cave to make room for the Bear Mountain development drew international attention and resulted in several websites being set up in Europe that chronicled the cave’s demise.
“The spectacle of caves being lost in our provincial capital is not one we want to be presenting to international caveists,” Duncan noted. “We’re not trying to save all the caves, we’re trying to save the ones that are left.”
While Spaet Cave was only about 12 metres deep, Langford Lake cave is about 40 to 50 metres, Duncan said.
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