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More than three thousand caves lie beneath the Texas Hill Country. Today, scientists and spelunkers have explored and mapped most of them. That wasn’t the case in the late 1950s, when James Reddell, an English major at the University of Texas, joined the school’s speleological society and began crawling into caves after class and on weekends. He enjoyed the physical challenge of climbing and sliding through narrow passageways and labyrinthine tunnels with only the light of his headlamp, but what really thrilled him was the chance to see spaces and creatures that were virtually unknown. While explorers had been mapping land in Texas for centuries, and collecting and identifying plants and animals aboveground, caves were essentially a blank slate. Reddell was captivated by these hidden…

The post After a Long Saga, a Weird Little Texas Cave Critter Is Staying on the Endangered Species List appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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