A brief September 2005 visit to the bluff-top entrance brought news: Daniel Boone Cave has been gated, some time during 2005, by the American Cave Conservation Association (ACCA: see photograph). The upper entrance gate has no obvious way of entry; perhaps the lower entrance has a locked gate (did not have time to investigate). I invite further details on this project from anyone who participated!

Conservation sign put up by landowner, with Adams Cave entrance in the rear. Click image to enlarge Photo by H. Lambert

Adams Cave Gate Compromised; Building on Adjacent Homesites Underway. During the early ’00s, the Blue Grass Grotto and other cavers helped the ACCA’s Roy Powers and the US Fish and Wildlife Service place a gate on Adams Cave, located a few miles southwest of Richmond. Adams Cave has a wide low entrance, several big cave rooms, and a stream passage that is home to federally endangered cave beetles. It had been badly battered by partiers over the years, and the cave gate – with a locked entrance – was welcome protection, although cavers were dismayed at the total lock-out of their further help, as is usually the case in these projects.

A visit in August 2005 indicated the gate still in place and the entrance area apparently undisturbed; however I was informed last year – in a term paper by a UK student, no less – that the gate can be surreptitiously opened and that the cave is a party site once again; I have also been told this by another caver. The Adams Cave gating project was part of an

effort by the landowner to have his cake and eat it too: Signs have been put up (see photo) indicating the ongoing cooperation between development and conservation, and two homes have been built on the homesites located above the cave entrance area. All I can say is, goodnight and good luck.

Bat research visit to the Sloans Valley Cave Minton Entrance area, May 12, 2005. Photo by H. Lambert. Click image to enlarge Photo by H. Lambert

Sloans Valley Cave: Bat Data Collection Monitors In Place. corrigenda Sloans Valley Cave is a well-loved major cave system (26+ miles in length) located at the southern end of Pulaski County, KY. In May of 2005, I was invited on a bat information field trip to the cave’s Minton Hollow Entrance area by the US Forest Service’s endangered species expert, Jim Bennett [side note: Mr. Bennett told me that the key to Goochland Cave is available during the ‘open months’ by calling the USFS office in Winchester and requesting it, and going there to pick it up and return it. Who knew!]. 

My initial reaction was one of astonishment, that the USFS was finally admitting to the long-obvious fact that Sloans is partly on their property and requires their protection (two full copies of a Significant Cave Nomination for Sloans’ federally-administered areas were submitted to the USFS in the late 1990s: the first was lost, and the second cannot be located).

On the May ’05 trip, Mr. Bennett was escorting Jim Kennedy, bat expert from Bat Conservation International (BCI), on a fact-finding mission into several Daniel Boone National Forest caves to assess the present status of bat populations and to determine