ELLIOTT ET AL.: THE CAVE FAUNA OF CALIFORNIA 
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Figure 3. Big Painted Cave entrance, with Schonchin Butte, a cinder cone in the background, Lava Beds National Mon¬ 
ument, Siskiyou Co. Jean Krejca and Steve Taylor. 
1,200-2,000 m. The caves range widely in length, but a nationally important cave exists there: Big- 
foot Cave, 20 km long and 367 m deep, which is also biologically rich. The Shasta Lake Karst is 
an area developed in the immediate vicinity of Shasta Reservoir in Shasta National Forest, Trinity 
County. Samwel Cave (Fig. 2) and Shasta Caverns are important caves with high biodiversity in 
this karst. Caves are developed in the Permian McCloud Limestone. Moderate sized caves are pres¬ 
ent with elevations ranging from 300-600 m. Additional sites include the Trinity Alps and the 
Hayfork Area, both in Trinity and Siskiyou counties. 
Cave Region 2 — Lava Flows North 
This region includes volcanic areas within the Southern Cascades and Great Basin physio¬ 
graphic provinces. Extensive basaltic lava flows from Medicine Lake Volcano, including Mam¬ 
moth Crater, and Modoc Crater, are located in northeastern California in the Modoc Bioregion, 
mostly in Lava Beds National Monument (LABE) in eastern Siskiyou and Modoc counties, but 
also in Modoc National Forest to the south. LABE contains 790 lava tube caves (Jeanette Meleen, 
LABE, pers. comm.) and associated features and more than 28 miles of passages; 25 caves have 
marked entrances and developed trails for public access. In addition to their geological, anthropo¬ 
logical and historical interest, the caves are home to a variety of cave-adapted organisms (Taylor 
and Krejca 2006; Lynn 2014). Two representative lava tubes are pictured in Figures 3 and 4. A map 
of the area is in Figure 5. 
Many of the lava caves are complex and permanent ice is sometimes present. Most of the flows 
are relatively young, ranging in age from 114,000 to 12,300 years old. The oldest lava from the vol¬ 
cano is the basalt of Hovey Point, along the northern boundary of LABE, which is 445,000 ± 
25,000 years. The basaltic andesite of Callahan Flow is the youngest lava at LABE at 1,120 years. 
