Western Cave Conservancy


The Western Cave Conservancy is a nonprofit 501 organization based in central California. It was primarily established to secure permanent protection for threatened caves in the western United States. The WCC also provides management, conservation, and education information to individuals, groups, organizations, and governmental agencies.

Mission

The primary objective and purpose of the Western Cave Conservancy is to protect caves and associated natural and cultural resources within the western United States.
Bylaws of the organization outline the following goals:
Several members of the WCC received significant publicity in August, 2012 following the discovery and analysis of a new family of spiders Trogloraptoridae.
In addition, subsequent projects have included paleoclimate work in both the Sierran Mother Lode, with field work assisted by the WCC. The paloeclimate work resulted in an article delineating work between 66,000 and 21,000 years ago. The data was collected from several samples obtained with the landowner's permission. This article appeared inl Quaternary Research, v.82. p.236–248. Another professional paper was published in 2017 about using silicate speleothems as proxies for detrmining past climates; the site being at Pinnacles National Park in central California.

Incorporation

The WCC is incorporated under the State of California as a nonprofit public benefit corporation. It was federally recognized as a 501 nonprofit organization by the Internal Revenue Service in February, 2003.
In 2007, the WCC received the additional designation as a nonprofit public charity under section 170 of the Internal Revenue Service.