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		Nature Conservancy Magazine: Winter 2007 Nature Conservancy Magazine Flora & Fauna Border Crossing Turning Turtle Subscribe Previous Issues

Enlarge this photo Ozark cave maps are helping to deter development from on top of sensitive karst ecosystems. Development can damage caves and cause sinkholes like this one in Bentonville, Arkansas (above). Ozark cave maps are helping to deter development from on top of sensitive karst ecosystems. Development can damage caves and cause sinkholes like this one in Bentonville, Arkansas. Go Deeper The Nature Conservancy in Arkansas The Interior Highlands, which cover much of Arkansas, are home to more than 200 species of plants and animals found nowhere else on Earth. Ozark Karst Ecosystem The Ozark karst ecosystem is an underground wilderness of caves, springs and aquifers that over the millennia have formed in the carbonate bedrock of the Ozark Plateaus.

For years, conservationists have gone to great lengths to keep secret the location of caves in the Ozark highlands of Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. The vast karst ecosystem — a maze of caverns, underground streams and subterranean lakes — is home to the Foushee cavesnail and more than 100 other rare species that have developed in isolation over millions of years and that scientists have hoped to keep safe from accidental damage caused by tromping adventurers.

But a growing aboveground threat — the rapid sprawl of houses and shops, especially in Arkansas’ Benton and Washington counties — has convinced local cave ecologists that revealing the location of underground caves may be the only way to save them.

Blind development has muddied or polluted crucial underground waterways. In one instance, a city road crew dug into an 80-foot-wide cave directly beneath a busy intersection. Development on top of karst terrain has also come back to haunt homeowners. In January 2007, a 10-foot-wide, 12-foot-deep sinkhole opened in the yard of one family’s home in Bentonville, Arkansas.

To protect the caves and homeowners alike, The Nature Conservancy released a set of maps to help builders and local governments steer clear of sensitive underground areas. The maps can be seen online, and have already garnered attention from developers.

“After we learned [our] property was directly above Cave Springs Cave, and developing it could affect rare animals and the area’s groundwater, we donated 32 acres,” says Arkansas developer Gary Brandon. Two other developers have already joined Brandon in donating $1.8 million worth of land located in a watershed critically important to a cave harboring the largest known population of the Ozark cavefish.

—Jay Harrod

Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photos ©  David Ashley; © Charles Fowler/Bentonville Daily Record