Alvin McDonald, Great Cave Explorer and ... Litterer?

During the summer of 1992, the Park Service rediscovered an area of Wind Cave known to the early proprietors but unknown to modern explorers.
    While the discovery of the new area was immensely exciting, the condition of the rooms that followed was also greatly disturbing. Newspaper was scattered everywhere. There were arrows smoked onto the walls and ceilings. String was festooned up and down the hallways. The debris in the area included a candle, a cigar band, matches, and several piles of broken cave formations.
    Unfortunately, this was a pattern with which the team was all too familiar. The early proprietors had located a beautiful area, and then removed whatever formations they thought were most salable. The newspapers were merely the leftovers of the wrapping paper that had been used to pad the formations on their way out of the cave.
    Condemning the McDonalds and Stablers is easy. Answering the next question is not: How much better are we? The McDonalds and Stablers were practicing good stewardship as best they knew it. They left the areas shown to visitors fairly "natural", and felt free to use the rest of the cave to make a profit.
    Today our idea of good stewardship has changed, but there is still much that we do not understand. More people pass through the cave every year, both on the concrete walkways and off, than the McDonalds and Stablers would ever have imagined. What damage are we doing?
    How will explorers one hundred years from now think of us?

Pits, Bones and Questions

In the middle of the Press Room floor, the team discovered a hole. Descending into the hole, the team discovered a low, round room. Scattered about the room were... skeletons. No, not human skeletons, but bones none the less. What were they from? How did they get there?
    The bones were very small and very delicate, and seemed to come from several different sorts of animals. No one in the team knew very much about bones, and so they were able only to wonder. But they would be back, and better equipped with both knowledge and instruments.
    Before the next trip the team boned up a bit on vertebrate osteology and got a camera. They then re-entered the Bone Pit, hoping to make a quick, positive identification of at least two of the skeletons.
    One of the skeletons was identified with fair accuracy - it seemed to be a wood rat, and wood rats are occasionally found in caves. The other skeleton appeared to be ... the vertebral column of a baby armadillo. As this was patently absurd, the team realized it was out of its league and that it needed an expert opinion. Photographs were taken and the group again exited the cave.
    Two days later, a group of biologists entered the Bone Pit. One of the skeletons was confirmed to be that of a wood rat, the other was judged to belong to some sort of bird. The other bones remain unidentified.

Untrammeled Wilderness:
To Trammel or Not to Trammel

Leading from one corner of the Bone Pit was a passage about eight inches high, tall enough for a determined caver to get through. In the middle of the entrance, however, was a small bone - a tiny femur, one of the bones that no one had been able to definitely identify. If anyone went through the passage, the bone would be ground into powder. What lay at the other end of the passage might answer all of the teams questions. The bone was too delicate to be moved. Was the bone an acceptable loss?
    Would it be right for the team to destroy one source of information (the bone) so that another source (the passage) could be pursued? If the bone was simply left in place and the passage was left unexplored, there would always be the possibility that some future scientist would be able to identify (or to move) the bone. Indeed, future expeditions might even reach the room beyond the Bone Pit from some completely different direction. Grudgingly, the team decided that the passage should be left unexplored.
    Deciding to leave mysteries unsolved, deciding to leave questions unanswered, is difficult. It is also necessary. The Park Service is charged not only to study the wilderness, but to preserve it. If by studying the wilderness we destroy it, we violate our most basic function. What good is knowledge of a thing if the thing itself is thereby destroyed?
    Questions are left unanswered. Mysteries are left unsolved. But the wilderness is vast, the questions are legion, and the search for understanding does continue. If we avoid the destruction of the thing we study, perhaps the search can continue forever.
    Wind Cave is so vast, and its potential for continued exploration and study is so great, that the rate of new discovery seems limited only by the inventiveness and availability of skilled explorers.
    The following highlights a few of the questions, problems, and discoveries associated with the exploration of just one tiny corner of Wind Cave, an area known as The Press Room.