Volunteering for 2022 National Public Lands Day

By Jennifer Foote, Cave and Karst Resource Coordinator, Lincoln National Forest. Edited by Daniel White

National Public Lands Day is celebrated annually on the last Saturday of September to promote volunteer conservation of public lands. The Lincoln National Forest depends on volunteers to help implement the cave program and the High Guads Restoration Project, a National Speleological Society conservation task force, has been helping out since 1999. For the 2022 National Public Lands Day, volunteers participated in multiple cave projects over the weekend. Teams removed muddy footprints from caves, mapped and inventoried a small cave, assessed future restoration activities, and replaced trail flagging.

In the past, there was a period of cave overuse. Visitors didn’t understand that dirt they picked up in another area would build up over multiple visits and ultimately have a negative effect on future visitor experiences. In the 1990s, cavers started to notice the impact to the caves and reported it to the USFS. For several years, the caves were closed to recreation while volunteers started the clean-up process. For National Public Lands Day, local water was hauled in and volunteers used soft bristle brushes, sponges, and spray bottles to gently remove mud and boot scuffs from flowstone before the damage calcified.

In addition to impacts from visitor use, frequently visited caves often have flagging trails to delineate where people should walk to concentrate the impact to specific areas. Depending on usage and cave conditions, the flagging eventually becomes brittle and torn (or stolen by packrats) and needs to be replaced. In this case, volunteers replaced 15-year-old blue and white flagging with orange flagging that matches the color used by the National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management in their nearby caves.

Another volunteer team was able to completely survey and collect cave inventory data for a 244-foot-long cave that was so difficult to reach, it had only been visited twice since its discovery trip in 1991. The data collected will be used to assess the cave and determine how it should be managed. Recreation visits are concentrated in less than a dozen caves, which allows the majority of caves to be protected from human impacts.

Over the weekend, 12 cavers volunteered a total of 163 hours of work. For assisting with National Public Lands Day, volunteers received a bag filled with Woodsy Owl swag, a fee-free entry certificate, and the appreciation of the Forest Service.