Local Communities and Scientists Fight to Protect Meghalaya's Ancient Caves from Mining and Climate Change

Visitors exploring the 7.2-kilometre Mawmluh Cave near Cherrapunji in Meghalaya must rely entirely on torchlight because no electric lights are installed inside. Milton Marak, a 27-year-old guide who first entered the cave at age 18, leads small groups through the subterranean passages under strict rules that ban littering, carving on walls, and touching formations. Only 25 people are permitted to enter the cave each day to help preserve its natural state.

Scientific Value

Beneath Meghalaya's limestone plateau, hundreds of caves hold an ancient record of the planet's climate history preserved in mineral layers of stalagmites. Researchers use uranium-thorium dating to determine when each layer formed, allowing them to track past rainfall and monsoon changes. A stalagmite from Mawmluh Cave preserves evidence of a major weakening of the Indian summer monsoon around 4,200 years ago, an event that served as the geological marker for the beginning of the Meghalayan Age. However, climate change is now altering rainfall and shortening wet seasons, leading to heavy downpours that wash sediment underground and threaten delicate mineral formations.

Threats From Mining

Above ground, the cave network faces immediate danger from limestone quarrying and coal mining. Sebastian Breitenbach, a paleoclimatologist at Northumbria University, recalls hearing blasting from a nearby limestone quarry while inside Mawmluh Cave. Despite a 2014 National Green Tribunal ban, illegal rat-hole mining continues across the state, with authorities registering more than 1,000 cases. An explosion at an illegal mine in East Jaintia Hills earlier this year killed 27 miners and injured nine others. Jaishree Sanwal Bhatt, a geologist at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, warns that mining is an irreversible threat because cave formations cannot regenerate once destroyed.

Unique Ecosystems

Meghalaya's caves also shelter extraordinary species found nowhere else, including transparent freshwater shrimp, white crabs, cave crickets, and a large cave-dwelling fish discovered during a 2019 expedition known as Neolissochilus pnar. Brian D. Kharpran, founder of the Meghalaya Adventures' Association, spent three decades documenting more than 1,700 caves and filed a Public Interest Litigation in the Supreme Court in 2007 seeking protection from mining, though it was dismissed. Because most land in Meghalaya is privately or community-owned, villages are now stepping in to train local nature guides like 24-year-old Quenty Mary Jallong to protect their underground heritage.

Context

Limestone caves act as natural climate archives because minerals deposited by dripping water capture chemical traces of ancient rainfall over thousands of years. Human activities such as quarrying and unregulated mining destroy the rock formations that house these fragile ecosystems and disrupt the underground water flows they depend on.