Minutes of the Chouteau Grotto Meeting
Wednesday, September 5, 2001


The meeting was called to order at 7:29 PM. 24 members were present.

Foresight Editor: We need one! If you are interested in filling this important position, please contact Bob Lerch.

Newsletter Editor: Jeff Williams has kindly stepped forward for this role. Hoorah Jeff, thanks!

Treasurer's Report: $1216.09 in the coffers.

New Business and Pleasure:

The Devil's Ice Box Rescue Drill will be on Saturday, September 15. If you are planning to attend, you should also come to the briefing on Friday, September 14. Please contact Roxie, Scott or another member of the Park staff at 449-7402 or nrschus@mail.dnr.state.mo.us for details.

The Annual Chicken Roast will be held on October 13, 2001. Mark your calendar....

On September 23 at 5 PM there will be a special DNR session on polluted creeks in Missouri. There are three in Boone County. Contact Mike Morgan for details.

Mike Morgan is looking for someone to be the keeper of the key for our monthly meetings over the next year. Please contact him if you are willing to do this.

Cave Reports:

Joe Hobbs spoke about his research on human uses of caves in West Malaysia and Borneo in July and August.

Rick Walk talked about his second visit to Karchner Caverns near Tucson, giving it a thumbs-up review as one of the country's finest show caves

Bill Elliott reviewed his summer's caving activities for the MDC. These included cave gating projects at Blackwell and McDowell Caves, and a cave gating seminar (to be described in an upcoming issue of the MCKC Digest).  The gray bat population has surged since McDowell Cave was gated. The population in Marble Cave is also healthy. Bill's report on the endemic cavesnail in Tumbling Creek Cave is less hopeful. A nearby ranch has been severely overgrazed and otherwise mismanaged, and the results may be responsible for the precipitous decline of the cavesnail's population. The Ozark Underground Lab has recently bought that land and fingers are crossed that the problems can be corrected.

Bill Elliott has recently published the waxed, waterproofed "Pictorial Guide to Missouri Cave Life." It will soon be available from the MDC. A fuller version of the guide is available on his Biospeleology Website, http://www.utexas.edu/depts/tnhc/.www/biospeleology

Bob Lerch reports that 3500 feet of Hunter's Cave has been mapped.

Upcoming Cave Trips

Roxie Campbell reports that space is available on a D-Level trip to Jeanette's Folly in the Devil's Ice Box on September 29, and on a C-Level trip to the Dripstone Cascade on October 13. Plans are being made for a Grotto trip to the Ice Box on the first weekend in November; stay tuned. Roxie briefed us about a recently published history of exploration in the Ice Box. Contact her if you are interested in reading it.

The meeting was adjourned at 8:47 P.M. There was no program.

Respectfully submitted,

Joe Hobbs
Secretary