Caves are a major frontier right in our (karst) backyards. They were discovering huge new caves in the 2000s in WVa. Major mapping efforts were a lot of fun. Project cavers would dig all weekend hoping to open up a new passage (and they did). I stopped when white nose syndrome showed up in the bats and it was possibly spread by cavers.
white nose is scary. I’d imagine this happens to the bats a lot. they live so densely that these kinds of epidemics are almost inevitable. looks like this time it was cross-oceanic human contact that kicked it off though
