THE PARADOX OF CAVE MANAGEMENT — TO CONSERVE OR USE
INTRODUCTION
For one of us (B.J. O'B) the paradox of cave management has come full turn.
From being the first president of the Australian Speleological Federation to becoming Director of Conservation and Environment and Chairman of the Environmental Protection Authority in Western Australia one develops, if not a different point of view, at least a different set of input data and criteria.
When a member of the Sydney University Speleological Society many long years ago, the word 'conservation' was not as popular a word as it appears to be these days.
We faced then as we face now a degree of competition between conservation of caves and the active use of caves for tourism.
But at this stage, in the 1950s, there was at least in the eastern states of Australia a general feeling that the tourist caves, those parts of them accessible to the public, were necessarily degraded or second-class caves. They were in a sense an object of ridicule on occasions. More recent explorations, such as of the Mammoth Cave at Jenolan, change the 'ridicule' to 'awe'.
When one views the situation of tourist caves from the point of view of a bureaucrat then one has to adopt a somewhat different approach — an approach for which no apology need be made. Subconsciously we realised that many of our caving activities were dependent, indirectly in the 1950s and then in the 1960s more directly, on the financial gain associated with tourist caves, but this was not given conscious expression.
Now most people at this conference would probably agree that the income from tourist caves, the road access and other facilities associated with development of commercial caves are important ancillaries which the 'pure' speleologist would ignore at his peril and certainly at his disadvantage.
It is one purpose of this paper to examine a few aspects of this apparent paradox of cave management — to conserve or use — and to examine further whether indeed these are necessarily mutually exclusive alternatives.
Recognising furthermore that the participants at this conference will be relatively small in number and that it is intended that the conference should be both provocative and also productive a number of questions are posed to which deliberately no answers are written down, although no doubt in discussions some answers may be 'verbalised'.
CAVES OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA
In a review of the caves of Australia prepared for the National Speleological Society of the U.S.A., O'Brien (1) paid relatively scant attention to the caves of Western Australia, except for some discussion about the very extensive regions within the Nullarbor limestone plateau.
One may in fact distinguish four major regions of Western Australia which contain extensive cave systems: the Kimberley in the north, the Nullarbor plain in the east, the Central West Coast, the Leeuwin-Naturaliste area of the lower west or south-west coast
The Kimberleys are relatively little explored and no doubt present one of the most massive logistic challenges to the speleologist that one can envisage.
The Nullarbor Plain area has been extensively explored by groups under the Australian Speleological Federation, and by South Australian groups in particular.
The Western Australian speleologists have given more attention to the caves of the Central West Coast and the Leeuwin-Naturaliste area and in fact it is primarily the last two regions that are of particular pertinence to the topic of this conference.
The Nullarbor Plain area no doubt will become more important from the tourist point of view in due course with the sealing of the Eyre Highway and the consequent greater percentage of tourists traversing the region. However, in general, unless a specialist tourist area focused around one or two Nullarbor caves near the Highway is developed in Western Australia the stated paradox of cave management generally for the next several decades will be concentrated on those caves in the Perth area or south-west corner of this State.
It might be added in context that the total area of Tasmania in which State this conference is being held is some 26,000 square miles, while that of Western Australia is one million square miles (this is not intended to be a value judgement) — consequently, distances are a much more important element in tourism in Western Australia than they are in Tasmania. In Western Australia the caves in the near-Perth vicinity and in the south-west occur in areas which also have particular scenic attractions of other types and are of high tourist density. Consequently, perhaps as much as in any State, the question of an appropriate balance between tourism and conservation, faces its greatest challenge in Western Australia itself.
HISTORY OF CAVE MANAGEMENT IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA
Although the existence of the west coast caves was known from the times of early settlement in these areas, it was not until the end of the 19th century that systematic exploration accelerated along with a realisation that some form of protection was required. In 1900 a government surveyor, Marmaduke Terry, was sent to examine the caves of the Margaret River area in the Leeuwin-Naturaliste region. Later that year the "Caves Committee" was established under the Surveyor-General, and one of its first recommendations was that all caves should be closed until such times as funds were available to open them properly (2). Another early decision was to erect Caves House as accommodation for tourists at Yallingup.
In 1902 the Caves Committee was reconstituted as the "Caves Board of Western Australia" enabling the vesting of cave reserves Class A under its control. The initial reserves so vested were in the Yallingup and Margaret River areas.
Meanwhile activity had accelerated in the Yanchep area to the north of Perth and between January 1903 and December 1904 no less than ten major caves were discovered there (3). Consequently, in August 1905 the Yanchep Caves Reserves were also vested in the Caves Board.
In 1910 the Colonial Secretary was appointed as a one-man Board of Control (the "best" form of Board) for the caves previously under the then defunct Caves Board and a few years later (1914) control was transferred to the General Manager of the State Hotels Board. The Yanchep Caves were later transferred to the control of the State Gardens Board, formed in 1920 and precursor of the National Parks Board of Western Australia established in 1956. The Yallingup and Margaret River Caves remained under the control of State Hotels until the late 1950s and early 1960s when they were transferred to the Lands Department.
More recently the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) has reviewed national parks and nature reserves — both existing and desired — throughout much of Western Australia. Caves are given significant attention. The recommendations of the EPA on national parks and nature reserves (4,5) are given in public documents. Those recommendations have been accepted by State Cabinet and the appropriate legal processes of gazettal and the like are gradually being implemented for the several areas.
It is important to note, however, that Cabinet's acceptance of the EPA recommendations in no way precludes the EPA from now utilising in a manner of mutual agreement the expertise of tourist managers and speleologists in specific areas and in general areas of importance. Discussions are at an advanced stage for a submission from representatives of Western Australian Speleological organisations to the Western Australian Department of Conservation and Environment with relation to "Cave Protection and Management in South-Western Australia".
The group of cavers with various interests has been working towards recommending a system of classification and management which is basically a simplification of Worboys (6) classification in New South Wales. It has emerged quite clearly from this group that whatever the classification and management option used, the ultimate responsibility for respecting that policy rests with the individual cave user whether experienced caver, scientist, novice or tourist.
Of particular importance in cave management is the matter of vesting (see also above) . At present cave entrances in the Leeuwin-Naturaliste region are located on both vested and unvested reserves of various kinds, on private land, on vacant Crown Land, and in State Forest (4,5). However, as the recent EPA recommendations (4,5) on national parks and nature reserves are put into force over the next few years, most of the important areas of caves will come under the control of the National Parks Authority, or under representative committees.
THE "USES" OF CAVES
Three major "uses" of caves are recognised in Western Australia:
- commercial, (i.e. tourist use)
- recreational
- scientific (including archaeological)
The nature of individual caves in some cases makes their use immediately apparent. For example, we would not envisage the Drum Cave at Bungonia (NSW) becoming a tourist facility in the near future because of the large vertical drop near the entrance which would make anything less than an elevator type of facility automatically preclude the use of the cave by tourists.
Equally well Lake Cave in Western Australia is very heavily used by tourists and has no major extensions of interest to speleologists.
On the other hand in a cave such as Nannup Cave in Western Australia there may be one portion of very good scientific interest close to a section which can be used for recreation or commercial purposes without undue prejudice to either interest. At Nannup Cave the "Devils Lair" is an important archaeological site which is located at one side of the entrance. It is protected by metal gates from the undesirable intruder and is vested in the Western Australian Museum. Nannup Cave itself is a well known, 'easy' cave, marked on maps available to the public and consequently is visited frequently by the public although it is not specifically a commercial tourist cave. The 'management' of the archaeological area consists simply of a physical barrier and an explanatory notice, and seems to have worked in this particular case. In fact one might assume that it provides an additional attraction to the casual visitor while neither the scientific nor recreational value of the cave is seriously affected by its multiple-use.
CONSERVATION AND USE
It is often useful when dealing with specific issues in conservation to use analogies in different fields, while bearing in mind the usual perils associated with any use of analogies. In the case of conservation of caves and their management a useful analogy recently examined in some detail by the EPA is that associated with forestry. One has very strong advocates, often amongst bushwalkers and speleologists in fact, that areas of forests should be left in their natural or 'wilderness' state. Indeed conceptually one can sympathise with this point of view.
Such a wilderness forest however only becomes a practicable reality to be enjoyed by a select few if it can be sufficiently isolated from encroachment by members of the public at large, who, for example, through camp fires, litter, trail bikes, carelessness, or other so-called civilised attributes leave evidence of their passing. If such a forest is bordered even by agricultural development the concept of "wilderness" becomes even more difficult to implement.
A 'wilderness' cave in this context has the distinct advantage of limited access. A wilderness forest of course is susceptible to lightning-induced bushfires. Equally, a wilderness cave is subject to river surges, drying out of water percolation or rock falls.
The essential delight of either a wilderness cave or a wilderness forest is aesthetically the same and may be simply that there is no evidence that someone has been in that location before you. In this sense many of the advocates of wilderness forests or wilderness caves can produce for an individual a sense of awe and a sense of unity with nature which some may liken to a spiritual experience (7).
For forests and caves the wilderness concept is the extreme of conservation. For forests, where as mentioned earlier there is a distinct risk of significant human intrusion, it may well be that there should be active 'management' rather than a 'hands-off approach'. This management may comprise actual logging procedures or culling of timber for commercial purposes as well as the creation of bushfire fighting access tracks and even periodic controlled burning off. Controlled burns, if carried out under the correctly supervised conditions at the right season at appropriate intervals and under suitable meteorological conditions, while providing a temporary secure portion of the forest, can in fact assist in the total wellbeing of native forests. More to the point of this conference, if a forest is managed in such a way and commercial timber extracted then the income from the timber sales may be sufficient to defer the costs of management.
If one literally carried that analogy to caves one would be faced with a situation where in the extreme samples of stalactites, portions of shawls, oolites, helictites would be sold at a kiosk near the cave entrance. It is obvious therefore that this forest analogy cannot be carried across in this case directly into the aspect of caves but we suggest that this is simply because the time scales of reproduction of the forms of forests and in the caves are so very different.
Therefore commercial production of caves, i.e. their use as tourist attractions, becomes one of retaining their visual attractiveness together of course with the unique aspect of total and perpetual darkness exploited by most tourist cave guides when they switch the lights out.
Therefore it becomes a matter of judgement for the operator of a tourist cave to decide to what extent he leaves the formations in their pristine state, where he locates his vantage viewing spots, his landings, his cables, lights, and all the paraphernalia including approach tracks which the modern tourist has come to expect for his dollar or two.
One provocative question that can be posed immediately therefore for this conference is the extent to which the tourist operator should try to 'improve on nature', for example by use of coloured lights, spotlights, walkways, enlargement of corridors or access paths and so on. It actually becomes a fine point of judgement as to whether a naturally pure white calcium carbonate shawl lit by an orange-red tourist light is any "worse" than a shawl formed in a cave with a high degree of iron salt in the earth above. The difference becomes a matter of detail in so far as the artificial lighting can never produce the fine structure caused by differential accretion of iron pigments of different densities. Perhaps wrinkled cellophane paper in front of the orange-red light is one answer.
There is one inescapable fact. You cannot have a tourist cave without evidence of man's prior intrusion but for many tourists they would just as soon as this was the case.
ASSOCIATED TOURIST ATTRACTIONS
Whereas in the early 1900s with relatively slow nodes of travel a visit to "THE CAVES" was often an event in itself, nowadays a visit to a tourist cave is merely one portion of an outing. For example, there may be, as at Yanchep, extensive barbecue facilities, some native flora and fauna, boating facilities etc, as well as the caves themselves. Grandma and generally grandpa can sit outside while the younger generations take a short tour of the caves, perhaps occupying near 20% of their total time on that particular excursion.
There is no reason why well managed auxiliary features such as mentioned earlier should not be added in the general vicinity of tourist caves, provided they do not detract from the quality of the caves themselves. In fact very often — referring to an earlier point — income derived from such auxiliary features may well be used to advantage in improving in good taste tourist caves themselves in a manner in which income derived from access to the caves alone would not suffice. In addition, of course, as is the case with any recreational amenity, there will be calls upon the Government to contribute in cash or in kind e.g. in provision of service roads, electricity and perhaps paid permanent rangers. The role of State versus local authorities in such contribution will vary from location to location so greatly that no generalisations can or should be made but each case should be dealt with on its own merits and on the advice of an adequately representative group of "experts". The experts of course in this case would not simply consist of a set of speleologists but would include those with practical experience in tourism and recreation.
In addition to these man-made facilities associated with tourist caves it may well be that nature itself has provided other attractive features such as nearby beaches, spectacular cliffs, native flora and fauna which serve to make the tourist gain an integral part of the recreational 'landscape'.
CONCLUDING COMMENTS
To resolve the paradox, as to resolve most conservation issues, in the long run is simply a matter of education or sensible and knowledge awareness. This will take time to achieve.
A programme of education in responsible cave behaviour at all levels is required. Fortunately, most amateur caving clubs in Australia are highly responsible and strive to indoctrinate newcomers to the sport to the best of their current knowledge. The danger is rather from the ignorant and the blatant vandals. The latter will always be a problem and physical barriers only present a greater challenge to the really determined. We can, however, take positive steps to educate the ignorant.
It is here that the promoters of cave tourism can play a vital role by presenting caves not as 'sops' to the 'sensation seeking tourist', but as an important part of our natural environment. Attempts should also be made to educate children in responsible cave behaviour through the media of schools, books and television.
If we can achieve a broader responsibility towards cave conservation then the paradox is lessened and the ensuing management is made more easy.
It is apparent that in caving as in forestry as in water management, air pollution etc, one can swing between an extreme of conservation on the one hand and extreme of development on the other. We suggest that as in many aspects of conservation and environment there is adequate opportunity in many caves to 'tread the middle of the road'. However experience with the Department of Conservation and Environment and more particularly with the Environmental Protection Authority in Western Australia has shown the truth of the adage: Confucius he say "... he who walks the middle of the road may get hit simultaneously by heavy trucks travelling in opposite directions ...".
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks are extended to Mr Bob Shoosmith, State Recorder of Caves for the Western Australian Speleological Group, Mr F. Logue of the Western Australian Department of Tourism, Mr Ian Elliot and members of the working group on "Cave Protection and Management in South-Western Australia".
REFERENCES
1. O'Brien, B.J. Caves of Australia. National Speleological Society (U.S.A.) publication.
2. Australian Academy of Science, Western Australia Sub-committee on National Parks, 1965. National Parks and Nature Reserves in Western Australia.
3. Elliot, I., 1977. The Discovery and Exploration of the Yanchep Caves, Paper presented before The Royal W.A. Historical Society February 23, 1977 - to be published in due course in the Society's journal "Early Days".
4. Environmental Protection Authority, Western Australia, 1975. Conservation Reserves for Western Australia as Recommended by the Environmental Protection Authority, Systems 4,8,9,10,11,12.
5. Environmental Protection Authority, Western Australia, 1976. Conservation Reserves for Western Australia as Recommended by the Environmental Protection Authority, Systems 1,2,3,5.
6. Worboys, C.L., 1976. A Basis for Cave Management, Paper presented to the 11th Biennial Conference of the Australian Speleological Federation; December 1976. (see Cameron-Smith, this volume)
7. O'Brien, B.J., 1958. Caving in Australia, Quadrant, 8: 25-30.