Rudy: This time, on Nature Scene we visit Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico.

In addition to our visit to one of the world's best-known caves we explore the natural world above ground.

A production of: Nature Scene is made possible in part by a grant from Santee Cooper where protection and improvement of our environment are equal in importance to providing electric energy.

Additional funding is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by viewers like you members of the ETV Endowment of South Carolina.

♪ easy calm music ♪ Jim: Hello, and welcome to Nature Scene at the edge of an ancient ocean reef in southeastern New Mexico not far from the city of Carlsbad.

I'm Jim Welch with naturalist Rudy Mancke and we are at Carlsbad Caverns National Park for a mid-winter visit.

Rudy, it's so hard to imagine this high, dry desert as being at the edge of an ocean reef.

Rudy: The world really does change through time there's no doubt about that.

And really, to figure out that this was a reef took a little bit of detective work.

Geologists have studied this permian reef, though probably as well as any reef in all of the world.

And it's a geological story in the sense that it's sedimentary rock that was deposited here.

Not only, though, do you have the reef proper you got an interesting fore reef which is facing the open ocean and also, we'll be able to see the back reef.

So, I mean, this is a lot of good information.

And really, if you look off just on either side of us here you can see the guadelupe mountains which is that reef that has been uplifted.

Deposited, you know, 250 million years ago the reef was here.

Ten to 12 millions years ago, the uplift began water got in there, and that's what created carlsbad caverns that we'll be looking at a little bit later-- working in the limestone rock.

Jim: And a lot of erosion has taken place since then, I'm sure.

Rudy: Oh, absolutely.

Now, it's interesting today this is really Chihuahuan desert.

That's probably the most simple way to describe it.

And there are a lot of plants around us here that say that.

This one in front of us, member of the lily family.

Sotol is one of the common names for it.

And like so many plants desert species, you got spines-- either spines or poisons-- to protect your investment of food and water.

And you can see the little spines on both sides of those leaves.

Jim: And as with many plants, they provide food and drink for the early Native Americans here.

Rudy: Yeah, when the flower stalk starts to grow there's a lot of edible material there, no doubt about it.

Jim: And, Rudy, this one over here-- lechugilla is a true indicator plant of the Chihuahuan desert.

Yeah.

If there's one plant that we would want to see to say chihuahuan desert that would be it.

And, you see, it's... Looks a little like sotol.

But, you see, it's got a spine on the end spines on the side.

Really, one of the agaves-- scientific name ag ave lechugilla.

That'll come up and flower once in it's life and then the plant dies and native americans took advantage of the food source as that little flower stock started growing up.

Prickly pear cactus, come on, you know it's common.

So many varieties here.

I'm sure we're going to see it all over the place.

That's really a flattened stem, now, not a leaf.

If you're out here, you just don't want large leaves.

Or if you have large leaves you better have spines on them.

This desert community certainly is interesting but I think it's time to get a little bit closer to that ancient reef.

♪ Jim: There are some 50 miles of primitive trails throughout Carlsbad caverns national park.

Many of them lead back into the guadeloupe mountains.

>> Yeah, and it's interesting here at slaughter canyon that you get kind of a cross section through that reef.

Really, you can get low looks and then we'll be able to get up on the top a little bit later.

But this gives you a view of the Capitan Reef limestone.

That's what that formation is called right there.

Basically, not a coral reef but, now, most of that material is laid down by algae or, uh, sponges and then a number of associated animals.

Hopefully, we'll be able to see some fossils of those marine animals a little bit later.

Jim: You mean in that solid limestone, Rudy?

Rudy: Yeah.

Relatively solid limestone and that's the material that much of Carlsbad Caverns has been cut from.

Although some of it is this fore reef material.

You can see a lot of it lying out here in the front.

A good bit of it has been eroded away.

And then in the distance back there farther up the canyon you get a feeling for layering up there.

And that would be some of the back reef formations.

We're really standing on the ocean side of the reef and you can imagine there were a lot of deposits here that trapped organic material and that gave rise to the gas and oil reserves that are so well-known in the permian basin.

What a spectacular view looking up at that ancient reef with the sky and the clouds behind it.

♪ Jim: We're walking up a dry wash very close to the main road that leads up to the caverns and all about us, a different kind of tree-- more of a hardwood look to it.

Rudy: Yeah, there's not a lot of water here now but it's a little more moist year around.

And that's Texas Walnut there, I think.

In fact, look at it.

It's all along the way.

Doesn't get a lot of water in here but if you're lower like this you get a chance to pick more of it up.

Look at this fruit right here.

I'll just pick this up.

I think we can talk about this.

I'm surprised always by the size of these things.

Jim: Even though it's little it provides food for animals and man.

Rudy: Yeah.

Small walnut's a good common name or Texas walnut sometimes.

Look at the size, though compared to the end of my little finger.

Jim: Half an inch, maybe.

Rudy: Oh, these things are tiny but they do provide a little bit of food for humans and for other animals out here.

Species name is microcarpa meaning "very small fruit."

Jim: Many of the plants around here provided food for the Indians and for the animals.

Rudy: There's no question about that and they're also now producing fruit but smaller fruit.

I was just looking ahead of us here.

Here's one of the hackberries.

Sometimes called desert hackberry.

Smaller tree than most of the hackberries in the east and again, that's an adjustment to climates that are a little bit drier than that.

Jim: Rudy, look on the rock right over here -- one of the lizards.

Rudy: Oh, yeah, male.

Just getting in the sunlight a little bit there.

Southern prairie lizard is the common name for that one.

See a little bit of bluish on the sides of the abdomen there but very, very obviously, a scaly lizard again coming out to warm up in the, uh...

In the sunlight.

There's another animal down there taking advantage of the sunlight-- the American robin.

Boy, that is a widespread species and the red breast that so many people associate with that bird.

Jim: One of the thrushes.

>> Yeah, that's an interesting animal perched up high.

The rocks here are also part of the story.

Now, we've come up a good distance from where we began.

This is some of the back reef formation.

The Yates formation, specifically.

And if you look carefully at it you see a lot of reddish-brown material and some yellows-- you know, iron, uh... Sulfides-- in here limonite and other minerals that would stain the rock that they are found in.

Jim: But in the main, it is a limestone material and creates an overhang here in this bend of this dry wash. Rudy: Yeah, it's kind of an interesting mix of sedimentary rocks.

Every now and then, there are openings in it.

Look at the shelter cave there.

And I'm sure that early man spent some time in there.

Let's get a closer look.

Jim: Native americans have been coming here for thousands of years and whereas we're here in the winter, it's cool but in the summertime where it's 90 or 100 degrees a place like this would provide cool shelter.

>> Yeah, and this is a perfect name for a place like this.

Shelter cave is what it's called.

Doesn't go back in very far but far enough to get out of the sunlight.

It's on a north-facing exposure so that means it's going to be shaded most of the day and you'd have a better chance, you know of finding water here.

Well, there are about 80 caves here in the national park but one truly big one.

Well, that big natural opening into what becomes Carlsbad Caverns is the best-known cave.

We want to take a look at that next.

♪ Jim: This is the only natural entrance to Carlsbad Caverns and was discovered in the late 1800s by cowboys who saw so many bats coming out of here.

>> Yeah, it must have been interesting in those early days.

Of course, Native Americans, now have been here before that and used this area a good bit.

You know, right up the way that little mescal pit, it's called.

There's a little remnant or ring midden is another term for it.

>> Where they baked the agave plants and got the mescal?

Rudy: Yeah, and ate, really, the inner part of it-- cooking that up and then the mescal was a drink that they made out of the sugary fluids that they got from it.

But native americans were here, there's no question about it.

This is really back reef formation.

All of this rock was formed in a lagoon behind the main part of the reef between the reef and the old shoreline.

Limestones and dolomites mainly-- Tansel formation.

And whether this was a sinkhole that opened this up or maybe some people think a paleo spring-- actually water flowing out of here-- that was really the way this cave system was created.

>> A major collapse right here at the natural entrance opened it up to the outside.

Rudy: Yeah, and the bats that come back here you know, April to October, are free-tailed bats.

Brazilian free-tailed bats, they're usually called now.

For years, they called them Mexican free-tailed bats.

But spend the winter in Mexico, come back in here and cave swallows also use this space.

And then also, outside when you still got light now.

Once the light's gone, you won't see the plants.

Pretty interesting grouping of plants here.

Jim: Rudy, here's an evergreen.

In fact, what would that be with the small green leaves?

>> With compound leaves on it, green throughout the year mescal bean is one of the common names for it.

I see a fruit pod up there.

Uh, sort of a fuzzy white on the outside.

If you open it up, the seed are bright red.

Sometimes used to make necklaces.

Jim: Pods on another tree that have opened up with no leaves on the tree at all.

Rudy: No, that's an odd one.

Um, Mexican buckeye is a common name for it.

Not really a true buckeye but the fruit sure does look like it.

And that's a plant, really, that's only known from this part of New Mexico and Texas and, uh, northern Mexico.

Interesting little plant, hard seed in it that sometimes people, uh, kids would use as marbles.

Let us see one more up there-- western soapberry is the common name for it.

See that yellowish covering around the fruit?

Actually, when you break that open and splash it in water it gets a soapy look to it.

>> Look at the beautiful little wren that came in here.

Rudy( chuckling ): oh, my goodness.

Jim: That's a common bird for this area.

Rudy: A rock wren, and serenading us.

Isn't that beautiful?

(vibrant chirping) Jim: Wren's the most energetic, perhaps of the hundreds of birds that frequent the park.

Rudy: Yeah, and that thing almost bounces-- look at it-- up and down, every now and then.

Interesting barring on the under side of the tail.

What a neat animal.

Notice something else down here that's not quite so obvious.

That's an egg case of a mantis stuck on the side, yeah.

Jim: That we've seen around the country.

Would it be the same kind of praying mantis?

Rudy: One of the varieties that's typical of the west but it's interesting so many people come down here and yet the animals make those adjustments.

Jim: Rudy, the guidebook says the natural entrance is the strenuous way in and we can see from here...

Narrow winding walkway...

Goes down, they say, about 750 feet.

Let's keep going.

♪ Jim: This is so much easier than the early explorers had it.

They were hanging from ropes and squeezing through spaces and crawling and climbing, and we're sauntering.

>> And the world is changing pretty quickly.

Temperature much cooler here than it was outside no doubt about it and there's some different smells in this place.

Jim: Smell that.

That's... Rudy: Well, bat guano, really.

In a sense, it's a smell of money, though.

That's what brought lots of people in here to mine that, and then they would come in and look back out.

Totally different world in the darkness of the cave from the world of light outside.

Isn't that neat?

Jim: And we won't expect plants to get any closer than the very edge.

Rudy: Oh, no.

That is an interesting view, though, there with sky and clouds beyond and an interesting, uh, little entrance and there's one animal, at least sign of it.

It's all over places like this.

The ringtail is one common name for it and we used to call it miner's cat, too because they loved to have it around.

It was a mouser, like a cat was but, you see, it's an omnivore.

Those are a lot of seed in the, uh, in the scat right there.

Jim: Well, the ringtail picked a good place to live.

It's known as a world-class cavern.

You might not prove it from right here but I'm sure it's beautiful way down below.

♪ There are about three miles of improved walkway throughout the cavern and here, in the hall of giants it brings you close to some of the most grand limestone formations.

Rudy: It is amazing, really, what water does with limestone when you add a little carbon dioxide to the water and form a weak acid.

And, really, ground water worked to shape this cave first and to form it.

Tall ceilings in these caverns is really one of the special things about Carlsbad Caverns.

And then all of the dripstone, now, coming in from above along those cracks and joints and crevices bringing a little calcium carbonate with it and forming stalactites from the ceiling and stalagmites coming up from the, uh, ground.

What a dome.

Jim: And the most impressive giant domed column here reaching all the way up to the ceiling 60... 62 feet high.

Rudy: Yeah, that's amazing, and you see domes there and then you see a column, you see right there where you've actually got stalactites from the top meeting the stalagmites from the bottom and forming interesting columns.

And, really, when you start naming these formations in caves usually, you name them because of the shapes.

This one right over here now, another draperies, huh?

Jim: And it looks like folded draperies, you're right.

Rudy: Yeah, yeah, that's neat.

The other thing that's so interesting when the stalactites are forming often you'll see those little... See the little soda straws over there?

Tiny little tube-like structures calcium carbonate... Water coming down loaded with calcium carbonate, there and every now and then you can see them dripping away.

Jim: And, Rudy, if they plug up, then they become stalactites... Stalactites?

Rudy: Yeah, and work on-on down, slowly but surely.

A lot of flowstone down here in front of us, too.

You see, again, calcium carbonate all over the place and another formation that's interesting in here-- what does that look like to you when you see it?

Jim: Looks like popcorn, very broken-up looking.

Rudy:( chuckling ): yeah.

And for years, it was thought that, really, after the-the ground water that shaped these caverns went away that it came back in every now and then and that's what caused the, uh, popcorn formation.

Now, it really seems that, uh that-that air movement and acidity has more to do with it than anything else.

Cooler air down low allows these to form.

Warmer air, more acidic, moving up top really doesn't allow them to form in quite the same way but you see it covering all of those other features here.

Jim: Well, the big question: how long does it take something like this to form?

Rudy: Well, most of the-the ornaments here are Pleistocene Age or more recent.

So, that's over the past, uh, million years and, really, this Carlsbad Cavern the cave formed in a...

In a...

In a... Over a period of time-- uplift, uplift-- ground water moving from one level to another and then the dripstone coming from above.

It's a magical place, there's no doubt about it.

♪ Jim: We're still in the big room-- some 14 acres, 280-foot-high ceilings-- and all around us, speleothems of all shapes and sizes.

Rudy: Yeah, speleothems meaning secondary mineral deposits in these caves and it's-it's indescribable.

You have to come and see it for yourself.

Draperies there-- appropriately named chandelier formation.

And again, water, over time-- we're talking about long periods of time-- drip, drip, dripping down.

Stalactites coming from the top; stalagmites coming up from the, uh, from the bottom.

Jim: And all basically the same materials.

Rudy: Yeah, and the one... Look at the totem pole... Is a good name for that one.

You can see it working up slowly from the floor.

Uh, it's amazing what water does here.

And you can see now that sometimes water not only arrives but goes away and the levels have changed over time.

Now, what would you call formations like that that formed in the water?

They look like lily pads, don't they?

Jim: Well, they do look like lily pads 'cause those are, to a degree, stalagmites because they're coming up from the bottom.

Rudy: Yeah, and there was water there, now that is now gone away.

See something else that's interesting over there-- whitish material.

That's gypsum, calcium sulfate, here, because... And, now, a lot of people believe this happened in much of this cave-- hydrogen sulfide gases from-from, uh, the Permian Basin nearby seeped in, came up from below into this area combined with oxygen and formed basically sulfuric acid that changed limestone to gypsum and slowly but surely you can even see some-some marks there where water just wears it away very easily.

Maybe that's what gives these large spaces to these, uh, caverns.

You just don't see places like this anywhere else.

Jim: What caused the more violent reactions here than in caves around other parts of the United States?

Rudy: Well, I think sulfuric acid made all the difference in the world.

I don't think there's any doubt about it.

The difference between that and carbonic acid is very great.

Oh, my goodness, you know, you'll look behind us and... Well, there's a little bit of standing water, at least so you can still see a lot of, uh, of standing water here and there in the, uh, in the cave.

Jim: And all those little stalagmites... Rudy: Oh, yeah.

Jim: Some call it a fairy land.

They look like little people all around there.

>> Well, you can imagine there was even more water here during Pleistocene times.

The climate was cooler and more moist then.

Uh, climate's warmed up a little bit, less water and so you don't see as much of active formation going on but look at the space up above us there.

Now, here's another interesting story.

There's stalactites but look at the color on those things.

Jim: Dark... Stained.

Rudy: Yeah, very, very dark stained with iron-rich material coming from the Yates formation-- we saw it earlier, you remember?-- above, being brought down and left here.

Absolutely amazing.

It is...

It is another world.

There's nothing like it.

Jim: Rudy, it's hard to believe that some of the cave specialists have been way up in there on lines still exploring what's up there.

Rudy: Yeah, wish I could get up there but I think that'd be a little hard for me to do.

Everywhere you look up and down, though there are exciting things and notice right in front of us here a record of that ocean that was here in the past that we said this was a, uh, a reef in Permian times.

Look at the fossils in there-- brachiopods really fairly common there.

Um, they were abundant in the Permian's oceans.

We still have them living today but not in great variety.

Jim: Marine animals and one looks a bit like a chambered nautilus.

Rudy: There is-is an earlier relative of the chambered nautilus, called an ammonite.

Very common, again, in the Permian times and now they're extinct.

And, then, right next to it, I see another animal that you don't find anywhere in the world today but was living in that ocean, trilobite-- three parts to that body.

Isn't that neat?

Right in that Capitan Reef limestone.

>> There is so much to see here and we can thank Jim White.

He was a cowboy-turned-guano miner and explored the inner reaches of the cave...

Talked about it.

Folks heard about it.

President Hoover made it a national monument.

Seven years later, 1930 it became the national park it is today.

Rudy: Yeah, and this national park is so neat because it gives you a chance to see plants and animals living today.

Then you can take a trip back in time.

Then you can go down kind of, in the bowels of the earth, so to speak.

We want to head back out next.

♪ Jim: We're up on the reef now well over 4,000 feet in altitude and a bit windy.

Rudy: Wind picking up a little bit, yeah.

But there's a lot of variety at, uh, Carlsbad Caverns National Park.

This is an amazing place, there's no question about it and we were looking at rocks as we came in.

I see one right here that's great.

What a strange-looking thing this is.

Jim: There appear to be small shapes in there that are cemented together.

Is that a natural cement?

Rudy: Yeah, this is really th... And they're natural formations, too...

Uh, calcium carbonate.

Um, this is usually referred to as a pisolith with lots of these little rounded concretions in them.

Uh, grain stone's a pretty good common name for it, though-- you see the little circles there?-- where it's layer upon layer upon layer that's laid down around some piece of material already available and it forms when you've got lots and lots of minerals in, uh, salt water-- lagoon-like formations.

Jim: With 46,000 acres here in the park sometimes it's good to look close at things all about you.

Rudy: Yeah, these rocks are so interesting.

Jim: Look over here, rudy.

Mule deer, big ears, close in.

>> Oh, man, there's two of them right there right on the sloping side of the hill here and they don't even seem to be bothered by us and, boy, those ears.

I mean there's no question why those are called mule deer.

Big... Look at them flopping their ears around and they're... Really, it looks kind of like a harsh environment and yet that animal certainly is doing nicely here.

Jim: A bit scruffy-looking, if you will.

Yeah, but probably just scraped by all these sharp-edged, uh, plants that are growing here on the side.

Jim: And you can see very clearly that black tip on the tail.

Rudy: Yeah, yeah, that's typical of that animal.

Those are really nice... And in a very precarious position because look in the distance, here.

You see the way this uplift...

This escarpment, really, goes on around.

Can't see really all of it because of the mist in the distance there but you can see the way it moves around, reef uplifted.

Really, when you look out to the left that's where the ocean was.

That's the ocean side of the reef and, then, the reef proper was basically where we're standing although a lot of that's been covered by back reef material and, then, you remember the material...

The layering that we saw as we went into Carlsbad Caverns.

That was some of that back reef material and isn't it amazing the way water, with acids wears away limestone?

That Capitan Reef limestone and the wonderful caverns... That's unforgettable.

♪ >> On average, 750,000 visitors come here each year to Carlsbad Caverns National Park in southeastern New Mexico near the city of Carlsbad.

Summertime most of them come but wintertime's good, too.

Rudy: This is a good time of the year, really, to come because there are a smaller number of people.

There are not as many flowers available right now but there's always plenty to see here really, any time of the year.

Jim: And the caverns are beautiful.

Rudy: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Jim: Thanks for watching.

Join us again on the next Nature Scene.

♪ Nature Scene is made possible in part by a grant from Santee Cooper where protection and improvement of our environment are equal in importance to providing electric energy.

Additional funding is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by viewers like you members of the ETV Endowment of South Carolina.