Lost River - Karst Information Portal

The Indiana Karst Conservancy, Inc.
If you were asked, could you name
something good that came out of cave
vandalism?
The Indiana Karst Conservancy was
formed in response to several decades of
vandalism taking place in a number of caves
in the Bloomington, Indiana, area. Several
widely known caves had become local
nuisances, attracting significant numbers
of “spelunkers” on weekends. Some of these
individuals later made contact with NSS
grottos in the region and became responsible
cavers; others did not. Whatever the outcome
for the spelunkers, the outcome for the caves
was the same—enormous amounts of trash
were laboriously carried in and abandoned
and most passage surfaces within reach were
covered, sometimes layered, with graffiti.
Bats, including the now federally endangered
Indiana bat, were driven out or killed.
Carbide lamps were in extensive use at the
time and the residue was dumped wherever
the charge ran low. Often, the caves were
permeated with the sickening smell of beer
mixed with urine.
By the mid-1980s, cavers including Bill
Wilson, Keith Dunlap, Dave Haun, Tom
Rea, Kathy Welling, Glenn Lemasters, and
Cindy Riley had had enough. They resolved
to do something about the situation, but
needed an organization structured and
focused differently from a grotto. Through
incorporation as a non-profit organization
in 1986, the Indiana Karst Conservancy had
the legal standing to negotiate management
agreements and lease caves from private
landowners, allowing access to be properly
regulated and demonstrating that negative
impacts to Indiana’s caving resources would
no longer be tolerated. The first action
taken was a series of cleanups in Wayne and
Sullivan caves.
Unfortunately, there were far more
By Richard Vernier, President, Indiana Karst Conservancy, Inc.
vandals than conservationists at work at the
time and these spelunkers clearly were not
lazy; they simply lacked the good sense or
moral values to know that they were doing
something wrong. As a result, they were
gaining the upper hand in the situation. In
response, in an action that was controversial
at the time, the Indiana Karst Conservancy
installed several gates on popular caves to
curb the culture of vandalism. While some
cavers were vocally against the gates, others
applauded the action and were motivated to
participate in restoration projects, knowing
their hard work would not be undone the
next weekend.
In Wayne Cave, people had hauled
bottles, cans, and all manner of other junk
through the 1,250-foot entrance crawl. A
good portion of that passage is a moderately
tight belly crawl and the trash, packed in
haul bags by the cleanup crew, had to be
dragged, pushed, and stuffed through this
obstacle from over a mile back in the cave to
a dumpster waiting at the surface.
Sullivan has a similar length stoopway
(called the “Backbreaker”) but the relative
ease of access had only served to encourage
even more damage. To compound the
problem, the cave was operated on a semicommercial
basis for a time. People had to
pay a “parking fee” for access but, beyond
that, there were few rules. While there was
no actual advertising involved, secrecy about
the cave location and access was hardly a
policy. More cleanups were scheduled and
this evolved into an ongoing annual tradition
known as “Under-Earth Day.”
As the organization matured, the Indiana
Karst Conservancy’s mission was expanded
to include an educational component to
make the public aware of the consequences
of cave vandalism and sinkhole dumping. A
groundwater system model nicknamed the
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