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CNN Saturday Morning News
Mammoth Caves Stretch 300 Miles
Aired June 02, 2001 - 08:22 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, let's go subterranean, shall we? Deep beneath the hills of the south central Kentucky area lies a long labyrinth of caves. It's the Mammoth Cave National Park. More than 300 miles explored and mapped, it is the longest recorded cave system in the world. Who knew? It is a place filled with wonder and some wonderful volunteers.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NORM ROGERS, ECHO RIVER CAVE RESTORATION: Our major purpose today is to go to Echo River and disassemble more of the bridge. It's really, really tough stuff. When you get down there, you're going to realize how hard it's going to be. The word of the day is work slow and work safe.
O'BRIEN (voice-over): Norm Rogers is the volunteer manager for the Echo River restoration project in Mammoth Caves. For the last 13 years, he has organized volunteers from around the country, mostly cavers from the National Speleological Society, to help restore the cave back to its national ecological state. The main goal on this project is the dismantling of a 70-year-old abandoned tourist walkway constructed of creosote soaked timber and spiked with rusty nails. The combination of creosote, tourism and lights have endangered many species in the underground Echo River.
ROGERS: Mammoth Cave is the granddaddy of them all, the longest cave in the world. And when I put out an e-mail to people and say hey, come on down and visit us, come on down and volunteer your time in the longest cave of the world, that gets cavers excited.
UNIDENTIFIED CAVER: Wood with nails.
O'BRIEN: Working a mile into the cave, volunteers have the task of removing lighting fixtures and cabling, tearing down metal fencing and hand rails and removing the wooden wreckage from old Park Service boats. With no electricity, these volunteers work with only a head lamp and hand tools. The National Park Service relies on the volunteers to get big projects like this done because staff and funding are not available.
JOHN FRY, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE: You need large numbers of people to pull something like this off and a volunteer effort in an organization like the NSS is probably about the only way you could get it done. CHRIS DINESEN ROGERS, VOLUNTEER: It's extremely harsh and hard work in the cave and cold and long hours and, you know, you've got two miles to haul rotten creosote and wood to the entrance and it's quite a daunting task. So you just, you couldn't hire somebody to do that, I really don't think. It'd cost you too much money.
O'BRIEN: The work is dangerous. First, heavy beams of wood are slowly disassembled by workers in the water and then they're carried away by volunteers to the cutting area. Next, huge pieces of wood are cut down into smaller pieces to be bagged and carried to a staging area inside the cave.
On this day, the work party dismantled 54 feet of wood and carried out more than two tons of material. Norm Rogers has calculated that over the last decade his volunteers have donated more than one quarter million dollars worth of labor to the project.
ROGERS: This is the legacy of cavers. It's a legacy of volunteers, a legacy of people who care enough about the environment, about the world around them to come down here and do something about it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: Now that we've piqued your interest, joining us now from Chicago to help us dig a little deeper into this fascinating world, Norm Rogers. Norm, good morning to you. Thanks for getting up early on our behalf.
ROGERS: Good morning, Miles.
O'BRIEN: All right, first of all, it's dangerous work, hard work. Anybody ever get hurt?
ROGERS: Oh, we've had a couple of sprained ankles. Once a lady actually broke her ankle. But it wasn't during the work. It was just actually a walk on the tourist trail. So in places the tourist trails are more dangerous than the work we're doing.
O'BRIEN: So sometimes it's the most innocuous things that trip you up, so to speak?
ROGERS: That is true, yes.
O'BRIEN: All right, well, why do people do it? That's a tremendous amount of dedication here to take care of things that, quite frankly, you would never see otherwise, right?
ROGERS: Yeah, it's true. People do it because the people we have coming down love caves. That's what they do for fun. These people think nothing about rappeling down a 200 foot rope into a cave and crawling through a muddy water filled tube and that's what they do for fun on a Saturday afternoon. It gives you a chance...
O'BRIEN: All right, help us -- Norm, you've got to help us understand... ROGERS: Yes?
O'BRIEN: To those, to the uninitiated, to the lay person here, to those of us who enjoy life on the surface of earth, explain the interest there.
ROGERS: It is, it's just a fascinating place to be. It's so different than being, like you say, on the surface. Being in a cave is just a wonderful, exciting, exhilarating experience.
O'BRIEN: And what led you to caving?
ROGERS: Well, just an interest in doing something different, doing something that's so different from our every day humdrum lives. Caving fulfills that for me.
O'BRIEN: I should say so. Now, have you ever been in a situation where you've been afraid for your own personal safety when you were in a cave and what caused that fear?
ROGERS: I really have not been in that situation.
O'BRIEN: Really?
ROGERS: No. You know, there are people who have gotten in that situation. You know, we have to have rescues from time to time in different caves, different areas. But personally I've never gotten myself into that situation.
O'BRIEN: Now, tell us about the ecosystem of a cave and why it is so important, from your perspective and your group's perspective, to preserve it?
ROGERS: Well, the ecosystem in a cave is very, I don't know if static is the word, but it's a very tight system compared to on the surface of the earth where, you know, if you chop down a tree or burn a bush or something like that, it's going to grow back right away. In a cave, things don't grow back right away. If you do some damage to the ecology down there, it doesn't repair itself as quickly as on the surface.
O'BRIEN: So that's part of the appeal, then, to try and preserve something that is so fragile and so -- well, there's a lot of inertia there, I guess you could say?
ROGERS: Yeah, that is part of the appeal. Also, the other part of the appeal is that these animals, these species that live down there don't exist on the surface. These are entirely unique to a cave system.
O'BRIEN: Let me ask you about amateurs for a moment. Now, after all, we were looking at amateurs here, but there are -- from time to time, just a couple of weeks ago we had a story out of France about a group of, well, spelunkers is the term we'll use here, which I know is a bit of a pejorative for you cavers, but nevertheless, they got themselves into a pickle there and had to be rescued. This happens from time to time. What's your advice, as a -- I know you're an amateur, but you're a well trained and seasoned amateur -- what's your advice to people who would, the uninitiated who would like to try something like this?
ROGERS: I would say contact the National Speleological Society in Huntsville, Alabama. They will lead you to a group of cavers who will be glad to show you the ropes, as it were, to initiate you. They'll probably take you out caving and it's something that you don't want to venture, you know, forth on your own because not knowing what you're doing, not knowing where you're going in a cave can be dangerous.
O'BRIEN: And Norm, you can find them on the Web, assuming you can spell speleological, you can find them on the Web, right?
ROGERS: Just look for caves.org and that will lead you right...
O'BRIEN: Caves.org. Thank you. We can spell that.
ROGERS: Yeah.
O'BRIEN: All right, Norm Rogers, thanks for joining us and helping us amplify on a fascinating story. We appreciate your time and good luck underground.
ROGERS: Thank you, Miles. Appreciate it.
O'BRIEN: All right, take care.
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