About
West Virginia has one of the most extensive cave systems in the eastern United States — thousands of caves ranging from small crawls to massive underground rooms, concentrated in the karst limestone geology of the state's eastern ranges. The West Virginia Cave Conservancy works to protect that resource through land acquisition, conservation easements, and access agreements with private landowners. WVCC owns or holds conservation interests in dozens of caves across WV and Virginia, protecting them from damage, commercial development, and indiscriminate human impact.
Caving is a niche pursuit, but the ecosystems WVCC protects are anything but niche — caves are home to white-nosed bat populations, rare invertebrates, aquifer systems, and geological formations that took millions of years to form. WVCC's work ensures that the growing interest in outdoor recreation in WV doesn't come at the expense of one of the state's most fragile and irreplaceable natural resources.
