Gated Caves

What is a gated cave? It is a means of cave and landowner protection by controlling access (and in some cases no access) visitation of the cave. While cave gates do not fit well as a part of a natural photogenic view, they do serve a needed purpose. Depending of which caver you might ask, the topic of cave gating is still very controversial in some circles. This has stemmed from past problems associated with some state agencies, where caver help was provided to build gates only to be denied access later. At any rate, many NSS chapters will build a cave gate at no cost to the landowner providing the owner allows access to the cavers. Reasons may vary for gating a cave but the basic ones are:

• Landowners may close a cave because of liability concerns.
• The cave is being vandalized due to public visitation.
• Rare or important cave life is disappearing because of human disturbance.
• Virgin, pristine or nicely decorated passages that will fall victim to vandals.

In most cases, there are management plans that provide a way to implement access to cavers and written agreements with the landowners. In many (but not all) access plans, there are also liability waivers to sign.

In the beginning, cave gates were mainly designed to just keep people out. Later, more friendly bat gates were used when it was determined that some caves are used as bat hibernaculums. Gate designs are very basic from a solid steel door to a jail type door construction. They also vary in size depending on where they are installed. While many caves or mines with large openings will probably have a very big (and expensive) steel gate, others with small passage size or openings will get a gate perhaps only a little larger then needed to crawl through.

Unfortunately, it seems like a gating frenzy is taking place in Pennsylvania. While the protection intent may sound good, it also puts a lot of pressure on cavers to monitor the gates for possible vandalism and repair when needed. Obviously, all caves can not be gated or protected so despite many best efforts, some caves will still fall victim to vandals. The hard part is to decide which cave is significant enough to give this type of protection. Cavers usually feel that all caves are special in some way but can not always give the protection needed because there are so many to watch.

Whether you agree with cave gates or not, you'll probably see more being built. The future of exploring caves may require that you are a member of a caving organization in order to get access. With so many flash light "spelunkers" running around, this might be a way to pull them in and educate on the aspects of safe, conservation-minded caving.