Mexico offers some good examples as you'll see what amount to "doors" broken through stalagtites to allow entry into going portions of cave. And obviously if that had not been done, vast areas of cave would not be mapped or open to diving. (Of course, if you pay attention off the line, now and then you'll note a "door" that apparently did not lead anywhere significant, so obviously there is some calculated risk involved and one hopes any such decisions are made with an eye toward a careful cost/benefit analysis.

In any case, once the initial door is made, there is no reason not to make every effort at conserving the cave from that point forward.

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Cave diving can potentially place different ethical tenets in conflict with each other (cave conservation versus exploration to open up new cave passage, etc) and the key to resolving those ethical dilemmas is having a solid ethical decisionmaking framework to follow. NACD and NSS-CDS could probably do more in that regard...

Where I think it gets fuzzy is when "exploration" divers decide they just have to lay new line (without carefully considering the greater good and the overall cost/benefits of that action) and start digging, scraping and otherwise damaging the cave pushing a questionable lead.

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Sidemount diving has the potential to aggravate the situation with 1) a minority of sidemount divers who may view sidemount as a reason to wallow in the silt and/or damage cave just to get through tighter restrictions, and 2) as the flat but wide sidemount profile differs from the more traditional higher but skinnier back mount configuration, which places new wear in different areas on old restrictions - if the SM diver does not swing a tank forward, etc, to fit existing restrictions cleanly.