Celebrating Groundwater and Cave Critters

What do endangered cave critters, drinking water, and fourth graders have in common? They are all linked by dint of a two-day festival held each spring in Madison shire Alabama.

For the past six years, the U Fish and Wildlife Service has teamed up with the Huntsville Grotto and U Army's Redstone Arsenal to near "Hungry Cave Critters," an activity involving endangered cave species, to excited fourth graders attending the festival. learners play the roles of various cave critters, including cave crayfish, cave shrimp, and cave salamander. Crawling upon the carpet floor of a darkened range the students search for fare cards. Competition for food is fierce; their critter won't survive if the learners can't find enough food.

Bats play a lock opener role in a cave's victuals chain due to their droppings, called guano. Bat guano is an important nutrition source in caves and is eaten through microscopic invertebrates, cave insects, cave crayfish, and cave fish. During the next to the first round of the Hungry Critters activity, our imaginary cave has been vandalized, causing the endangered bats to abandon the cave and thereby upsetting the amount of available provisions Many more cave critters die in the game because of the missing guano in the viands chain.

After two quick circulars of food gathering, the scholars learn about the variety of animal species that live subterranean and glean insight into their fragile cave habitat. Water festival educators emphasize the four endangered cave animals that live in northern Alabama: the gray bat (Myotis grisecens), Indiana bat (Myotis sodalis), Alabama cave shrimp (Palaemonias alabamae), and Alabama cave fish (Speoplatyrhimus poulsoni).

Student also learn that groundwater is an important source of drinking water for nation in Alabama as well as other areas of our political division Clean groundwater supports a diversity of aquatic cave animals. Cave fish and cave shrimp living in groundwater streams and lochs are indicators of water quality. If aquatic cave species abruptly disappear from their environment, that's a warning of possible groundwater contamination.

Before the pupils leave, they watch a video clip taken from inside a cave upon the Redstone Arsenal. Tiny, translucent Alabama cave shrimp swim in a mere along with ghostly-white cave crayfish and pink-tinged cave fish in their subterranean world. In about 25 minutes, the fourth graders have learned about endangered cave critters and by what means their drinking water and the groundwater below their feet are all interconnected in the fragile karstlands of north Alabama.

For more information about the Madison shire Drinking Water Festival, visit the web site at http://www.hsvutil. org/drinkingwaterfestival/index.htm.

The activity "Hungry Cave Critters" is published in shoot forward Underground, a natural resource education guide, (http:// www.dcr.state.va.us/underground.htm).

Theresa Jacobson, a wildlife biologist and outreach specialist in the Service's Jackson, Mississippi, Field Office, can be reached at terri_Jacobson@fws.gov or (601) 321-1129

Copyright University of Michigan, seminary of Natural Resources and Environment Jul-Sep 2005

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