I am not calling for handicapped ramps into every cave. Those who want to visit should be able to gain entry in a controlled manner. It should not be closed to the public and open only to a chosen few.
In that same drainage, the Kaweah, there are a number of caves which have had some truly spectacular formations. One of them, Crystal Cave, is open to the public on a pay-as-you enter system run by the Park Service and has been reasonably well preserved. The others are well off the road and are open to qualified people.
By "qualified" I mean those with the technical expertise and experience to get in the cave and then get out safely. In my younger days I was instrumental in building concrete and steel gates in the entrances of a couple of them. The purpose wasn't necessarily to keep the ordinary citizen from seeing them but to keep that ordinary citizen from killing himself.
A case in point: Church Cave, on the Kings River, has several entrances and is a bit hard to get too so it's ungated. One entrance, the "Cliff Entrance," gets the caver into the guts of the cave quickly via a 140 foot drop. Back in the late 60s or early 70s a group was planning a photographic expedition in the cave and chose to lower the heavy equipment down that drop. To make a long story short, the man at the top lost his footing and fell to the rocks below. Two years later, when leading a group of rangers and sheriffs deputies into the cave to show them the problems involved in cave rescue, the area where his body fell was alive with mold.
Back on the Kaweah river, one of the prettier caves is known as "Lost Soldier Cave." We gated it but the Park Service still permitted tours to "qualified" groups. One such group, Boy Scouts, I believe, shattered formations that had taken eons to form. With that experience, topped by the muddied white flowstone I mentioned in my earlier post, why should I be the source of information which might - no, which WILL cause the destruction of such beauty?
Call me an elitist if you wish. I've been called much worse in the course of my seventy-two years. I still will not reveal the locations of some of the things I've seen.