Protecting caves means
protecting their data.
Cave formations take millennia to grow. A careless coordinate posted publicly can bring vandals within a week. KEEP treats data stewardship as foundational, not a policy disclaimer.
The access system isn't bolted on top of the platform. It's the reason the platform exists at all.
Sensitive locations by default
Wild cave coordinates are not public. Every new site is private until a trustee explicitly sets its visibility. Show caves are the only category public by default.
Tiered access, not open access
Sensitive site locations are only visible to verified, approved accounts. Pending users see public information only. Trust is granted incrementally as it is earned.
No coordinate dumps
Every export is scoped to your access level and watermarked. Bulk exports of sensitive locations require trustee privileges. There is no public API serving raw coordinates.
Hazard and access flags
Site records surface access conditions like gated, permit required, flooding risk, landowner permission, and seasonal closure as taggable descriptors so field teams know what they're walking into.
Nothing gets overwritten
The claim-based data model preserves every version of every fact. Sensitive location corrections don't erase the old record; they supersede it with a full audit trail.
Your data stays yours
Documents and sites you upload are not shared, sold, or aggregated for external use. Group-shared data is visible only to group members. You control every visibility setting.
Responsible disclosure guidelines. KEEP encourages cavers to report significant discoveries to their local grotto and regional trustee before entering data. Significant new passages, previously undocumented entrances, and sensitive biological sites should be shared with land managers before any public record is created. The platform supports this workflow. Data can be added privately and promoted to wider visibility only when the caver and their trustee agree the time is right.
Every site record has its own visibility setting, independent of your role.
Public
Visible to anyone, including unauthenticated visitors. Show caves only by default. Requires explicit promotion by a trustee.
Contributed
Visible to verified members as a stub (name, state, county). Other users can submit an access request with a written reason; the owner or another approver reviews each one.
Strictly private
Visible only to the site creator, their groups, and users with explicit access grants. The default for all newly added wild cave sites.
Trustee only
Invisible to all non-trustees. For sites requiring the highest level of protection: sensitive archaeological, biological, or at-risk locations.
KEEP encourages cavers to share significant discoveries with their local grotto and regional trustee before entering data into any system. The platform supports the workflow — it doesn't require a race to publish.
Keep it with your team first
New passages, unmarked entrances, and sites with sensitive biological or archaeological features stay with your survey team and local grotto until the landowner and regional trustee have weighed in.
→Add to KEEP as private
Create the record at Private or Trustee-only visibility. Coordinates are gated on every request; the record exists for your team without leaking to the wider community or to unauthenticated viewers.
→Open it up on your schedule
When the caver, trustee, and landowner agree the timing is right, the record can be promoted to wider visibility. Every promotion is tracked as a versioned claim — nothing silently flips to public.
→The platform is built to wait. There is no bounty on speed. An entrance discovered this year can stay off the public map indefinitely. The record exists and is safe; the location does not render until it should.