Lock 'em up

I guess cave conservation means different things to different people. There are probably as many definitions as there are cavers. For myself, I’m a relative newbie to caving, still in awe of almost every speleo-related feature I get to see, and someone revels in the freedom of New Zealand’s public conservation land. 

I still struggle to comprehend what it must be like to simply not be allowed to wander around in the bush pretty much where you like. To find a prospect and simply tog up and get on with exploring it. They tell me this is the world of the North Island caver. That they have to ask for permission from snotty-nosed private individuals to be allowed access to the land and then to the cave. The concept of finding a barrier part way through a cave beyond which the over-land ‘owner’ has barred is, quite frankly, shocking to me. 

Window on the world

That a cave can be privately “owned”, harvested of their sub-fossil remains, pilfered of their speleothems and mercilessly exploited for every last tourist dollar by anyone at any time is not a world I live in here in the Buller nor one I wish to. Here on the Coast if you happen to have a chunk of native bush on your land, you are most certainly not at liberty to do what the hell you like with it. Not so much as a 2 foot length of 4x2 timber can be taken off it without first obtaining a long-winded permit adorned in red tape. 

The situation in the North Island reminds me of the way rivers and river resources were handled in England a hundred plus years ago – where the landed gentry ‘owned’ them and could profit from them as they alone saw fit. Most of that attitude was thankfully left behind on the steerage to this new colony. How caves on private land have ended up being treated as they are now seems an extraordinary throw-back. 

As a newly fledged society we forcibly broke up over-sized land-holdings to allow for greater equability and more recently have clawed back the lease conditions on high-country stations in line with our current environmental values. How long until we wake up then and ban the sale of sub-fossil remains? Heavens! Even ivory which is still being ‘produced’, we don’t tolerate the sale of any longer, but sub-fossil remains – distinctly and by definition finite in numbers – are still legally, and it would seem morally for sale, everyday here in New Zealand.

You can probably sense I think these things should be valued more carefully by us, but when I heard that there were proposals afoot here on the West Coast to lock up more caves and heavily restrict access to others I was livid. I felt I was surely as responsible a caver as ever there was and so why was there a need to place locked gates in the middle of remote wilderness areas where hardy anyone ever goes anyway?! Maybe that seems contradictory, and maybe I am.

The plan to gate one cave in particular galled me severely. Thus I began to make plans to visit it before it was gated. Before someone could tell me ‘no’, before the bureaucrats got in on the act, before I had to go grovel for permission just to be in place that as a Kiwi was mine to visit as of right. It was an interesting exercise in stealth to try and get access to the co-ordinates of this cave and it took some time, but finally I had the 14 magic numbers I required.

Meanwhile though I’d been asked to help with the DoC Kawatiri cave conservation programme. To help manage these natural wonders so that cavers (and others) could continue to be free to visit, view, explore and enjoy these places whilst simultaneously aiming for zero harm, that is zero degradation of the unique karst features and characteristics. 

Checking for size

For me seeing is believing. I’ve now string-lined off the remaining trashed shards of Moa skulls that have been crushed by a careless caver’s boot; I’ve now seen the broken stubs of fossil remains protruding from a wall where over-eager cavers have climbed where they didn’t need to go and should have chosen not to; I’ve now spoken with people outside of the caving community who tell me that they regularly take their friends and visitors to fragile places that even I haven’t been to yet; I’ve now seen muddy great hand smears on pristine walls of moonmilk; I’ve now seen the ‘accidentally’ (or not) snapped straws – sometimes in their hundreds. 

And hey, I’ve broken more than one stal myself – pushing a lead too hard, not watching out, not slowing down enough. I’ve trodden on delicate matchstick-bones even while being told not and to ‘watch out!’ It happens, but it shouldn’t and more importantly it needn’t happen. Yep, for me getting involved in the cave conservation programme out there and helping other cavers to do better was only another way of helping myself to be more aware of the potential for ‘harm’ and of being forewarned in the hope of avoiding unwitting ‘mistakes’ that could do more damage.

Over-sized water droplet held in suspension

It’s easy enough to do; to forget that most of these ‘accidents’ are utterly irreversible; to not think about the cumulative impact of mud and grime on aesthetic values, let alone on the ‘life’ of still growing stals etc.. Then there’s the historic information we unwittingly obliterate; bones we handle and contaminate with our DNA; bones we save from nasty wet streamways and leave exposed in oxygen-rich environments; bones we shift out of the way of some impending danger and forever de-contextualise. With proper precautions and controls in place these detrimental incidents can be reduced to an absolute minimum.

Crazy delicate crystals

Over these past few weeks and months I’ve experienced enough of the negative impacts that humans can have in a cave environment to realise that the freedom to wander about sans-restriction is one thing, but to allow everyone to have a turn at busting a few stals, leaving a fresh set of footprints alongside an established pathway and go trompsing on ancient, delicate and historically-important remains before they learn not to, this is not an option open to us. 

Already there are way too few of these treasures left. Already too much has been muddied beyond the redemption of any amount of water-blasting. Already un-thinking scientists have hogged an inordinate percentage of the sub-fossil record, and are now started on the coprolite record. Already, what the ravages of time and a sometimes violent earth could not do, we, the intelligent ones, have done and moreover continue to do, if today’s offerings on Trade Me are anything to go by. A lot of our cave systems have only been on our radar for a handful of decades, at this rate what will they look like 100 years from now?

Balloon speleothem

 

I recently took a couple of experienced North Island cavers out caving here in the Buller and happened to show them the worst example of sub-fossil deposits I know of. They were enthralled! They’d never seen in-situ Moa bones before. I found that kind of sad, it was only that we were passing the spot that I pointed them out. If I’d realised the de-nuded state of the caves they were accustomed to I’d have made more of an effort to show them just how mind-blowing it really is to view an entire and beautifully articulate giant Moa skeleton. Poor sods. They’ve probably never seen an un-sullied stal or tendril-perfect gypsum flower garden or wall of pure, mud-free moonmilk extending beyond Scurion-range either.

Articulated Moa skeleton

Entire Giant Moa skeleton

As an end-note then, while on the one hand I did get to visit this particular cave in question before it was gated and see its globally unique feature, it was on the other hand me who gated the cave while I was there. Having seen the damage done already therein, I’m pleased it was me who gated it. Cavers are still free to visit it any old time they like; they don’t have to ‘ask’ for permission to do so, all they need to do is collect the key from the DoC office on their way out there. Simple and effective. While I can’t guarantee that these fossils will never be harmed by anyone ever again, they remain in context and with an appropriate level of advocacy speaking up on their behalf. Visitors are informed in advance of what to expect so that chance of any ‘accidents’ are reduced as close as conceivably possible to zero. 

Broken fossil stub

Gated entrance

Maybe next time I’ll take those fossil-starved North Islander cavers to visit this particular cave and really blow their socks off… 

Globally unique fossil