From: "Carolina Anson"

Sent: Tuesday, December 14, 2004 8:30 AM

Subject: Cave Protection in Arabia

 Hi!!! How are you?

 I'm speleologist from Brazil, nice to meet you.

 Congratulations for website, it's very interesting.

 Sorry for my English, I'm not very well at this

 language. I'd like to know if there are laws or rules

 to protect caves in Saudia Arabia. I'm doing my post

 graduation at environmental law, and I'm going to write

 about speleological asset protection. To know

 environmental laws in different countries is very

 important to me.

 Thank you! See you!

 Carolina Anson

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REPLY:

Hello Carolina!

It is good to see people like you working on the protection of caves around

the world...congratulations!

To my knowledge, Saudi Arabia has no law specifically for cave protection.

However, I am told that recently a government agency has contacted all

regional authorities asking them to protect caves in their areas.

There is a project to put fences and/or gates around certain Saudi caves and

I hope it will not be long before this is implemented.

An area with a huge concentration of limestone caves is now linked to

Riyadh, the capital, by new highways. This has resulted in serious damage to

caves and cave formations. We cavers have been shocked again and again by

garbage, graffiti and discovering that all kinds of lovely stalactites have

been broken off and carried away.

Isn't it sad?

John and Susy Pint