A recent Facebook post from Carlsbad Caverns National Park revealed how a discarded Cheetos bag in the cave triggered an ecological crisis. Now, the park warns visitors to be more mindful of their impact on the environment.
Jim West / Alamy Stock PhotoA National Park Ranger guides visitors on a tour of the Kings Palace area in Carlsbad Caverns.
Last Friday, Carlsbad Caverns National Park announced in a Facebook post that a discarded Cheetos bag has wreaked havoc on the cave’s ecosystem.
A visitor had dropped the Cheetos bag in the Big Room, the park’s most popular attraction. The cave’s damp environment allowed microorganisms to flourish in the bag, attracting cave insects and other creatures that spread the contents across the cave. Inevitably, mold began growing on the cave surfaces, creating an ecological crisis for park rangers.
The situation has prompted an appeal to park visitors to be mindful of their surroundings and dispose of their waste properly.
A Cheetos Bag Creates An Ecological Disaster Inside Carlsbad Caverns
Carlsbad Caverns National Park / FacebookThe Cheetos bag discarded inside of Carlsbad Caverns.
On Sept. 6, 2024, Carlsbad Caverns National Park published an unusual post on Facebook. In the post, the park explained how a single discarded Cheetos bag had created a pressing environmental problem inside the cave system.
The park explained that a visitor had dropped the snack bag off the trail inside the Big Room, the largest cave chamber by volume in the United States at about 4,000 feet long, 625 feet wide, and 255 feet tall at its highest point.
Cave ecosystems, such as those in Carlsbad Caverns, are incredibly sensitive to contamination, and even a small disturbance can ripple into an ecological disaster. The food left in the bag eventually became moldy, attracting cave bugs that spread the moldy residue to other parts of the cave.
“The processed corn, softened by the humidity of the cave, formed the perfect environment to host microbial life and fungi,” the park explained in their Facebook post. “Cave crickets, mites, spiders, and flies soon organize into a temporary food web, dispersing the nutrients to the surrounding cave and formations. Molds spread higher up the nearby surfaces, fruit, die, and stink. And the cycle continues.”
This situation necessitated a thorough cleanup by park staff to prevent the further spread of foreign contaminants and mold.
Park Rangers Warn Visitors About The Potential Dangers Of Litter
Mathieu Lebreton / FlickrExamples of rock formations inside Carlsbad Caverns.
When park rangers realized the impact of the Cheetos bag, they immediately set out to clean up visibly moldy areas in the cavern. Unfortunately, the Cheetos residue had led to the spread of foreign microbes in the cave.
“At the scale of human perspective, a spilled snack bag may seem trivial, but to the life of the cave it can be world changing,” park officials explained.
In their post, the officials highlighted how small decisions from park visitors can lead to big impacts.
“How we choose to interact with others and the world we share together has its effects moment by moment,” they wrote.
Human interaction with the cave has led to contamination in the past. After all, any person who enters the cave often leaves behind residue, dust, or lint from their clothing and shoes. However, visitors can make smarter choices when it comes to the items they choose to bring, and leave, in the cave.
“Here at Carlsbad Caverns, we love that we can host thousands of people in the cave each day,” the Facebook post read. “Incidental impacts can be difficult or impossible to prevent. Like the simple fact that every step a person takes into the cave leaves a fine trail of lint. Other impacts are completely avoidable. Like a full snack bag dropped off-trail in the Big Room. To the owner of the snack bag, the impact is likely incidental. But to the ecosystem of the cave it had a huge impact.”
This most recent update from the park serves as a reminder to all future visitors to Carlsbad Caverns or any other protected site: “Great or small we all leave an impact wherever we go. Let us all leave the world a better place than we found it.”
After reading about the Cheetos bag in Carlsbad Caverns, dive into the story of Runit Dome, the nuclear “tomb” in the Marshall Islands that is leaking nuclear waste. Then, read about Eunice Foote, the first person to identify the relationship between greenhouse gas emissions and rising global temperatures.
