For thousands of years, water has percolated beneath
southwestern Oregon’s Siskiyou Mountains to form weird marble
caverns with limestone chandeliers. Now, National Park Service
officials say a neighbor’s mining, logging and grazing may be
altering the delicate chemical composition of the caves’ water
sources. The “neighbor” is the Siskiyou National Forest, which
completely surrounds the 480-acre Oregon Caves National
Monument.
Oregon Caves Superintendent Craig
Ackerman says clearcutting and the use of herbicides during tree
planting in the monument’s watershed might be changing the acidity
of water flowing through the caves. A significant change would
disrupt the caves’ formations and their subterranean ecosystem, and
harm the habitat of the threatened big-eared bat, says
Ackerman.
Although the Park Service has just
begun to study the long-term impacts, the issue has come to a head
because the agency is formulating a new management plan for the
monument. According to Ackerman, the plan may call for an expansion
of the monument’s boundaries onto Forest Service land. A draft plan
is expected by February 1997.
* Katie
Fesus
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline What happens above ground….
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