County shut researchers out of two 'live' caves

Nearly three years after public announcement of La Tetera's discovery, Pima County officials say there are no plans to re-open the caves to scientists who want to continue their work and begin new studies.

Nearby Arkenstone Cave — open to cavers and researchers since the 1960s, but still a "live" or "wet" cave — was also closed not long after the discovery of La Tetera. A previously unknown species of pseudoscorpion was discovered in Arkenstone, and a hydrology study was under way when the cave was closed. The pseudoscorpion has since been listed as one of Pima County's priority vulnerable species.

La Tetera — Spanish for "the Teapot" — was discovered on a cold winter day in 1996 when a Colossal Cave Mountain Park employee spotted water vapor spouting from a tennis ball-sized hole.

For several years the small circle of cavers who knew about the opening only monitored its slow erosion and made no attempt to enter, according to Martie Maierhauser. She and husband Joe Maierhauser run Colossal Cave Mountain Park for the Pima County Natural Resources, Parks & Recreation Department under a contract with the Parklands Foundation. Joe Maierhauser's association with Colossal Cave dates back to the 1950s, when he and a partner first operated the cave under a lease from the state.

"It was pretty exciting. It was a little, tiny hole, no bigger around than a silver dollar. It was a matter of watching it open itself up for a very long time. It was a natural process. Clearly there was something under there," said Martie Maierhauser.

Eventually the decision was made that the enlarging hole could collapse and present a danger to someone unknowingly walking over the hollowed-out spot. A vault-like steel entrance was fabricated, out of labor and materials supplied by the Maierhausers and the group of veteran cavers, some of whom contributed their own money to the construction.

There was nothing unusual about the move, said Martie Maierhauser and some of the cavers interviewed about the initial exploration of La Tetera. The Maierhausers were accustomed to handling building and maintenance work "in house" after decades running Colossal; keeping the discovery of the apparently unremarkable cave a secret was also not unusual, said Martie Maierhauser.

"People associated with caves tend to be that way," she said. "Caves tend to have a mystique and they tend to get vandalized — or they get explored by people who don't know what they're doing."

She cited the now-familiar story of cavers Randy Tufts and Gary Tenen discovering Kartchner Caverns near Benson in the 1970s and keeping it quiet for many years. It was eventually acquired by the state and turned into a world-class "show cave" as part of Kartchner Caverns State Park, but only after it was investigated and documented.

During the period immediately after La Tetera was first entered, members of the discovery group contacted a number of prestigious experts from several fields about the cave. Among them were:

* Penelope Boston, a New Mexico Tech microbiologist well-known for her work on microbes in extreme environments, who placed microbial monitoring stations in the cave. Boston, a research associate professor of cave & karst science at NMT in Socorro, has worked on projects proposing the use of cave or other subsurface habitats for Martian colonization. She was one of the founders of the "The Case for Mars" series of forums on space exploration and has had a number of articles on the subject published in scientific journals.

* Yar Petryszyn, curator of the University of Arizona's mammal collection and biologist with experience on rodent and bat populations.

* Robert Pape, a UA entomologist, discover and publisher of a paper on a species of pseudoscorpion unique to Arkenstone.

* Nick Czaplewski, associate staff curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History. Czaplewski became involved with the discovery of ancient animal bones.

A number of local veteran cavers and experts on cave geology, biology and hydrology were involved from the beginning, including geologist and bat expert William Peachey and Steve Smith, a veteran caver and conservation chairman of the Escabrosa Grotto, the local chapter of the National Speleological Society. Smith was in the midst of a hydrological study, monitoring water levels in Arkenstone during the record regional drought.

Czapleswski said La Tetera was of interest not only because it was a relatively pristine cave — the few cavers who have been inside found no signs of earlier visits by humans — but because there is no indication of how the animal remains found inside got there. To date, no openings other than the original tennis ball-sized vent have been found.

The lack of human contamination was also important to Boston. She said rare, pristine caves are about the only places on Earth not touched by humans, making them the closest analog for space exploration. Boston said she had placed microbe collecting stations inside La Tetera and had hoped to retrieve them. She said they may still be of use, if she can retrieve them within the next year.

Word of La Tetera's discovery apparently didn't make its way up to the Pima County Board of Supervisors and County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry until publication in March 2004 of a story and some stunning photos about the La Tetera.

And that was only after one of the cavers who was doing preliminary exploration of the first rooms noticed a draft coming through a small opening in one of the walls. Further investigation led to discovery of a much larger room with dramatic formations. The discovery of the larger room and dramatic, colorful formations, as well as mammalian bones — later determined to be of an Ice Age camel, pony-sized horse and giant vampire bat — sparked interest among researchers.

In an instant, the cave went from being unremarkable to the kind of discovery that spreads among cavers worldwide.

The week after the publicity about La Tetera, a party of county officials including Supervisor Ray Carroll, whose district encompasses the cave and park, toured La Tetera with at least two of the original group of cavers

Carroll raved about the cave in a guest column he wrote for the Arizona Daily Star, saying it had significant scientific potential, but "slim" chance of becoming a public cave because of vertical drops and near 100 percent humidity.

But there was little action nor comment on La Tetera after that.

Pape and several of the other cavers and scientists who worked on La Tetera formed Sonoran Science Solutions Inc. in January 2005.

Sometime after the publicity about La Tetera, a committee was formed by the parks department to write a plan for the cave's future under county control. They met twice — in January and March of 2005 — according to Kerry Baldwin, the county's natural resources division manager, who said it was soon disbanded.

"It didn't come together because there weren't any funds," said Baldwin.

After county officials became aware of La Tetera, cavers and scientists who attempted to enter either La Tetera or Arkenstone — which had been accessible to researchers long before La Tetera was even discovered — were forced to sign an agreement ordering them to turn over all their notebooks, photographs and other information and material collected through their exploration of the caves.

Most were reluctant to talk about their requests to enter the cave.

Baldwin said he didn't know the origins of the requirement but said the intent was to protect the county's property.

"I was asked to provide all my notes, photographs and field books," said Czaplewski in a phone interview from his office at University of Oklahoma in Norman last week. "I did find that a bit odd. For a scientist that is bread and butter, what keeps me in my job, publishing.

"I complied. I turned in a big stack of materials. The fossils are actually just sitting here, not cataloged because I wasn't sure what was going to happen, how they're going to be disposed of. Are they going to go into a credible collection? We have a credible collection here."

Czaplewski said he had been working with the Maierhausers and, as such, thought he had permission to work in La Tetera.

"You can't find stuff like this anywhere," he said. "The cave is kind of unique in that it was sealed."

He said La Tetera, having been sealed for thousands of years, is a time capsule.

Czaplewski said animal remains from La Tetera could "fill in some gaps" in scientists' understanding of which animals were where and when.

He said it fits in with the Sky Island concept of migration and isolation — that as the climate changed, some mountain species may have been unable to migrate to other areas, leading to extinctions or decreasing the genetic diversity of isolated species.

The area east of Tucson that includes the caves is at a migratory cross roads of sorts, said Czaplewski, an intersection of the north-south alignment of the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Madre, and the east-west route between the Chihuahuan and Sonoran deserts.

So, findings in the La Tetera could have relevance with current climate change, he said.

"Things like the vampires (bats). We don't have those big vampires (bats) around anymore, but they do in Mexico," Czaplewski said. "If the climates allows them to move with their habitat, are they going to be up here in the United States some day? I'm reluctant to say it (but) there's certainly a food source, plenty of cattle around."

The county's restrictions on researchers has had a chilling effect on the local cavers who did some of the initial exploratory work at La Tetera, and some of the researchers.

Randy Gruss, among the first cavers to enter La Tetera, said he could not grant permission to the Star to publish photographs he had taken in La Tetera without permission from the county, even though the photos had already been published by the Star.

Petryszyn said he signed the document because it was the only way to get access, but said that in his experience it was an unusual requirement to be made of an academic researcher working on public property.

"I have not been in the cave," said Petryszyn. "We (Petryszyn, Peachey and Gruss) got out there and the county office gave us the wrong key. That whole day was wasted because of the county's screw up. I don't know if it was a mistake."

Baldwin confirmed that no one has been allowed in the cave in nearly two years and said he couldn't foresee any conditions under which anyone would be allowed to enter in the near future

Contacted earlier this month Baldwin said there was talk of forming another committee to write protocols to protect the cave and mapping out a science plan. He said the committee would look at more than La Tetera, as it was anticipated that other caves would probably be discovered on the new property the county was buying under the voted-approved bonds for acquiring open space land.

"There is probably more external interest in moving forward than there is internally," Baldwin said.

"More than anything else," he said, "it's a funding issue."

He said some money might become available for developing a plan and initiating studies under a section of the county's planned 2008 bond election.

Ultimately, he said he'd like to see an interpretive center at Colossal Cave Mountain Park that would give visitors a virtual tour of La Tetera. He said new technologies might make it possible for visitors to get a sense of the cave without physically entering it.

But that is all a long way off.

Baldwin said he had no idea even when members would be chosen for another committee, or what the criteria would be for membership.

Meanwhile, Petryszyn, who was asked to, and accepted, a position on the first committee, said he was never notified it was disbanded. He said he doesn't understand the point of stopping the careful scientific work that was already going on to draw up a plan that undoubtedly should include getting the very information that is now being lost.

"I don't know if it's a conflict with those that discovered and gated it. (But) I consider it a shame because it's a resource," said Petryszyn.

"Over a year and a half of basic data has been lost."

Petryszyn said the data stored on humidity and temperature recorders in La Tetera is the kind of information that would have been useful to track changes that occurred after discovery.

"It's no more what I would call a "virgin cave," because it has been entered. So, once you have that, you might as well (explore it) or you should set up some scientific experiments monitoring to see what the conditions are in the extreme pristine condition it's in now and get a baseline to work with. Then proceed from there."

Payan did not return repeated calls for an interview about the caves, referring calls to his department's staff scientist. She, in turn, referred questions to Baldwin, who was not on the county staff when the first committee was formed.

Having the county's top officials find out about the cave through a newspaper article, rather than through official chain-of-command channels, likely caused some embarrassment, said Baldwin. But he said the decision to lock out the scientists and cavers for more than two years ago wasn't revenge.

"I'm not sure that I'd agree that it is anger. I don't think anybody is being punished."

County Administrator Huckelberry said that he was unaware that the scientists had been denied access or required to turn over their notes and materials they collected at La Tetera.

But he said he didn't necessarily disagree with backburner status for forming another committee to create protocols for exploring La Tetera and Arkenstone.

"It's probably not as important as buying open space or some other things," he said.