Park Officials Discuss Restricting Access to Cave

[L Roebuck]

Park Officials Discuss Restricting Access to Cave Area

DEVIL’S DEN STATE PARK, Ark. -- This weekend's dramatic cave rescue has many people focused on how to prevent such accidents in the future.

Officials at Devil’s Den State Park are trying to find a way to restrict access to that particular part of the cave.

People have been exploring this cave for years.

Full Article

[Azurerana]

Not that I am out to diss my fellow journalists, but this story doesn't really make sense.

I've been to Devils Den. The "Den" itself is a sandstone crevice maze, not really a cave in the classic sense. It is a deep, narrow jumble of rocks. Think "tectonic cave" or "a bunch of sandstone slabs with dark crawly bits through and beneath". Within the Den is at least one fairly substantial cave where it never gets light and actually gets cool, and it has passage so that a caver would mistake it for an actual cave. Highly endangered Ozark big-eared bats do too...they overwinter there. That cave, last I knew, was alarmed against human visitation. (Raccoons and bats do not carry flashlights.)

www.batcon.org/batsmag/v10n2-4.html

So, where are these people getting trapped? In the maze? Falling into the above ground crevasses? In the actual cave? We don't know and these reports don't tell us.

If they are going into the bat hibernaculum in the summer, maybe the park rangers should just leave them there as food for the bats come winter. Oh, darn, they eat insects.

www.nwanews.com/nwat/News/66188/

Oh, BTW... unescorted visitors didn't used to be allowed in the Maze area at all, but staff cutbacks forced the question, as the alternative used to be led tours of the area.