Each month Wild Basin holds a special guest speaker. On April 25th, 2024, Drew Thompson and Cait McCann came to the nature preserve to talk about cave restoration efforts in Austin, Texas. Cait McCann is an Environmental Program Coordinator for the city of Austin and Drew Thompson is a cave restorationist in Austin. 

When I think about Austin, caves aren’t one of the first things that come to mind. However, caves should be one of the first things that everyone thinks about. After hearing Mr. Thompson’s talk, I was so surprised by how many caves there are in Austin. Although I couldn’t find any formal numbers for how many caves there are in the city, the Texas Karst Database Records claims that there are around 6,000 caves (Texas Speleological Survey)

Caves have become natural wonders that lots of people go to in order to explore new depths of the world. However, only in recent times have people started to realize the importance and beauty of caves. Many caves throughout Austin have been recently discovered, due to the fact that landowners weren’t very fond of them. Many landowners would fill caves with rocks to block them off and others would use them as a trash pit. As you can imagine the cave isn’t the only thing affected when trash is tossed in it….but also water quality. The caves in Austin are connected with the water streams in the city. 

The entrances to caves serve a massive biological importance, and when the caves are closed off it can start to affect the animals that use them as a home. Having an entrance to a cave allows important nutrients from outside to make its way in. There’s also the massive importance of making sure that animals can get in. In order to ensure that animals can still get into caves around Austin, there have been gates put up in front of them. They serve an importance to make sure that crickets, bats, and more can get into the cave, while making sure that humans stay out. 

Inside the caves of Austin lie many creatures that are rarely ever seen above ground. Troglobites are animals that can live their whole life underground. The caves in Austin serve as homes to 6 endangered invertebrates, including the Tooth Cave Pseudoscorpion, Tooth Cave Ground Beetle, Tooth Cave Cave Spider, Bone Cave Harvestmen, Bee Creek Cave Harvestmen, and the Kretschmarr Cave Mold Beetle (Austin Water). In the talk Mr. Thompson also went over cave crickets, which serve a big importance to keeping biodiversity. One thing that was mentioned about the tooth spider that I thought was really interesting was that they’re translucent. When the light reflects on them in a certain way they also become a sort of holographic blue.

In 2002 Austin Water started using Wildflower Cave as a learning resource, after its restoration in the mid 90s. Now the cave is visited by elementary schoolers every year and they get to go inside of it as well. Every year around February there’s a day where Wildflower cave is open for the public to go into, although Mr. Thompson said there’s no promise that you’ll get in because a lot of people go.

 Overall I think everyone should know more about caves in the area. They serve an important role to many different animals. I really enjoyed listening to the talk and now I’m fully invested in learning more about caves as well the animals that call them home.

Blog post by Meghan Gomez

Image Credit: Austin Water