Association promotes and protects caves

You see it on highway billboards and perhaps soon on license plates: "Missouri: The Cave State."

Missouri has more than 6,200 known caves, and a drive is under way to make more money on cave tourism while also protecting private caves from public encroachment -- considered a growing problem.

The Missouri Caves Association is in its third year promoting caves on billboards with the help of $10,000 annual grants from the Missouri Division of Tourism. There are about 20 caves open for tours in Missouri.

"Missouri has a lot of history with caves," said Tracey Berry of the Department of Tourism. "We have promoted them for some time."

She said the Missouri Caves Association is currently the only statewide group getting matching funds to promote a tourist attraction.

The cave association last year began selling license plates plugging Missouri as "The Cave State." So far, 125 people have ordered plates and an additional 75 must do so for the state to start making them, said association president Steve Thompson, general manager of Fantastic Caverns in Springfield.

Half the money from the plate sales would go to promote cave visits, and the remainder would to go to the Missouri Caves and Karst Conservancy to preserve caves, said Alicia Lewis of St. Louis, vice president of the conservancy. ...

More than 10 percent of 127 caves in St. Louis County have been bulldozed or otherwise damaged for construction projects, Robert Criss, an earth and planetary sciences professor at Washington University, wrote in a recent issue of the journal Missouri Speleology.

•	Association promotes and protects caves The Kansas City Star online, Sunday, March 25, 2007 Byline: Kevin Murphy, The Kansas City Star

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