International Show Caves Association


1990 ISCA founded in Genga.

The International Show Caves Association (ISCA) is an organization based at Grotta Grande del Vento in Genga, Italy. It was founded by a small group of show cave operators to exchange information about cave management and cave restoration.

We at showcaves.com think an international organization for show caves is a pretty good idea. Unfortunately we have no idea what the ISCA does to earn this name. We browsed their website and found the following facts:

  1. They charge pretty high member fees, several hundred Euros, which depend on the number of visitors. Although this seems to be a good idea, they have only two different fees, and only tiny caves apply for the lower fee.
  2. They maintain a list of members. This list is absolutely strange, as it does not offer any information on the caves except the name and address, some don't even list the address. On the other hand the list shows that they have only a few dozen members. Compared to many thousand show caves on earth this is a pretty bad percentage. And several members are show mines, not show caves.
  3. They have impressive mission statements. Unfortunately we did not understand them.
  4. They organize regular meetings, which take place at one of the member caves. These meetings seem to be pretty cool, but we could not find any publications on the web, so we guess they do not publish any proceedings.

After all, we have no idea what this organization does, and we guess it is pretty useless. We suppose an international show caves association should at least represent half of the show caves, should publish karst management related papers, should maintain a show cave registry and provide detailed information about all members, on the internet and on paper. A good thing to get more members would be lowering the fees.