The wild cave project team at Great Basin has had a very active field season. Extensive surveys of eight caves were undertaken with the intention of creating cave maps and establishing three-dimensional spatial relationships among the caves. While we were surveying, we had ample opportunity to begin work on the physical and biological inventories of the wild caves. With these inventories, we can monitor the impact that cavers are having when they enter the cave.

Of course, when someone mentions cave biology, people automatically think about bats. Part of the biological inventory involves mist-netting bats. A very fine-thread net is placed over the opening of a cave and bats become entangled as they enter or exit the cave. On three different occasions, Park staff and volunteers braved the cold night to capture bats in order to measure their size, weight, and gender. More than 200 bats were captured, their data recorded, and released during the year. This includes 97 bats captured in one net over a 4-hour period. You can imagine the difficulty involved in untangling, measuring, and releasing bats that are very unhappy with their situation, at a rate of one every two minutes for 4 hours. We were happy to find that several large communities of bats, and four National Park Service Sensitive species, live within the park.

We also had the opportunity to spend several days deep in the interior of the Park searching for new caves. With winter fast approaching, we will likely wait until next summer to begin surveys, but initial exploration has revealed some truly beautiful caves. Three members of the Resource Management staff braved the below freezing cave temperatures to rappel down the face of a 100 foot frozen waterfall.

With almost eight months worth of data, we now look forward to a winter of office work as we condense and compile all of our work. By the end of the winter, we will have in place a working, science-based management plan for the caves in the park.