Potential Tongue River Cave dwellers must register with BNF

The Bighorn National Forest has announced that access to Tongue River Cave is now open to individuals that register and obtain the lock passcode, which will change frequently.  

Registration can be done through the Bighorn National Forest website by selecting recreation then cave registration in quick links, https://www.fs.usda.gov/bighorn. 

According to the BNF, an updated management order was released by the USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Region in Golden, CO. This management order states that all caves in the region (which includes Colorado and parts of Wyoming, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Kansas) require mandatory registration. The new order also changed the annual seasonal closure for Tongue River and Cliff Dwellers Caves to April 15, through Aug. 31.  Other significant caves in the BNF will be closed Oct. 15, through April 15.

The reasoning behind the change of the seasonal closure comes from the last few seasons of monitoring and learning how bats use caves in the BNF. After the 2019 discovery of a maternity roost of Townsend’s big-eared bats in Tongue River Cave, scientists were able to monitor bat activity during the temporary cave closure. It was also found that few bats were utilizing Tongue River and Cliff Dwellers Caves for hibernating.  Maternity roosts are areas essential for female bats with pups to live protected from predators and disturbances that can hinder their babies’ growth and development. Just like any animal, every generation is essential for the survival of the species into the future, especially relatively long-lived species with low reproductive rates, like bats.

The BNF also said in a release that in addition to monitoring bat use, surveillance of the area noted vandalism and damage to the sensitive cave ecosystem. Vandalism to the cave closure and a break-in occurred in early July 2021, resulting in expensive repairs to federal property and suspected mineral theft. This not only impacted tax-payer funds to fix what was damaged, it also removed part of the cave that took millennia to build and is not replaceable, thus forever altering the experience of future visitors.

The BNF reminds the public, anyone that enters a cave in the National Forest is required to submit a mandatory registration form that can be found, along with more information on caves, on the Forest website at www.fs.usda.gov/bighorn. 

For any further questions, please contact the Forest Supervisor’s Office and Tongue Ranger District at (307) 674-2600.