Service Animals

Service animals are welcome in all outdoor areas, within the visitor center, on the Discovery Tour (the only accessible cave tour), and on the Scenic Tour.

The Scenic Tour has staircases and metal platforms with metal grates. Handlers are encouraged to consider these grates and the safety of the service animal when booking a tour at Jewel Cave. Service animals must walk or be carried in a front carrier (not in a handlers arms) on the Scenic Tour for the safety of the handler. This policy is to allow all participants to have hands available to use on the handrails of the stairs.

Due to the concern for resource protection, Jewel Cave National Monument’s regulations allow the closing of an area to the use of service animals. This determination is made if the presence of the service animal poses a direct threat to health and safety of people or wildlife. The Historic Lantern Tour and Wild Cave Tour routes have been closed to the use of service animals for the safety of wildlife and participants in these areas.

Dogs classified as service animals are individually trained to perform a specific task that assists a person with a disability. Service dogs are legally permitted anywhere that visitors can go. They must be allowed wherever visitors are allowed.

Examples of such work or tasks include guiding people who are blind, alerting people who are deaf, pulling a wheelchair, alerting and protecting a person who is having a seizure, reminding a person with mental illness to take prescribed medications, calming a person with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) during an anxiety attack, or performing other duties. Service animals are working animals, not pets. The work or task a dog has been trained to provide must be directly related to the person’s disability.

Emotional support, therapy, and companion animals are not service animals under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) as they have not been trained to provide a task directly related to a disability. Emotional support animals and service dogs-in-training are not service animals under ADA, but are considered pets and must abide by the monument’s pet regulations.

Currently pets are permitted in the following areas:

• On roadways and in parking lots open to public vehicular traffic

• In picnic areas

Note: Pets and Service Animals present in areas not permitted, open themselves to potential issues with wildlife, as well as posing a significant danger to the handler and other visitors.
For more information about service animals in the National Park Service, visit the NPS Service Animals website.