In the past five months I have been exposed to and have experienced many different aspects of the Bureau of Land Management ranging from rangeland to wildlife… and recently I had the opportunity to experience an aspect of the BLM which I had not experienced yet… recreation! Although I do think that the recreation section of the BLM is wonderful, I was very excited because we were going to be working with the section that involves… CAVES!!! So, when our caving specialist asked a few weeks ago if we would be interested in going on a caving expedition with him, we all nodded our heads feverishly and anxiously replied yes! To start out the expedition, we prepared our caving outfits, which included: full body suites, knee pads, elbow pads, helmets, and head lamps. These outfits were very important as he explained because of the epidemic of the White Nose Syndrome that has been witnessed throughout the West. White Nose Syndrome is a fatal disease that has caused the death of millions of bats in North America; therefore, our caving outfits had been specially sterilized for the expedition. After we prepared our outfits we headed out to Little Angora Cave! We got to enter the caving system from various entryways and to explore all of the tiny nooks and crannies of the cave which was unbelievable! We climbed and crawled until our heart’s content! We even found a roost of male bats which was exciting! But of course, we turned around and left them to their hanging around even though our disturbance would not be not be crucial as it would be during the winter season. Here are some pictures that captured our experience!

Our caving outfits!

Caving!

Stephanie Burkhardt

BLM

Roswell Field Office