National Park Service blames bag of Cheetos for disrupting entire Carlsbad Caverns ecosystem
In New Mexicos Carlsbad Caverns, early explorers named many of the caves unusual features. This one in the Big Room is the Dolls Theater. (Allen Holder/Kansas City Star/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
National Park Service officials got a little snarky with their serious message after crews rushed to stop the impact of a bag of Cheetos that was left inside Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico.
In a Facebook post, the Carlsbad Caverns National Park posted an image of a full bag of Cheetos that was discarded inside the Big Room area of the cave system.
"Great or small, we all leave an impact wherever we go," the post read. "How we choose to interact with others and the world we share together has its effects, moment by moment. And we feel it."
The post continued, highlighting the times rangers are greeted with a smile or those times they get to share the dawn’s first rays with someone they care about.
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On the flip side, rangers also get the experience of someone imposing their frustrations on anything, including times when they forget to pack their own sunscreen and snacks before visiting the park.
"Here at Carlsbad Caverns, we love that we can host thousands of people in the cave each day. Incidental impacts can be difficult or impossible to prevent," the park wrote. "Like the simple fact that every step a person takes into the cave leaves a fine trail of lint."
But there are other impacts, the park noted, that can be "completely avoidable," like a bag of Cheetos left "off-trail in the Big Room."
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A visitor left a bag of Cheetos inside the Big Room area of Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico. (Carlsbad Caverns National Park Facebook)
"To the owner of the snack bag, the impact is likely incidental. But to the ecosystem of the cave, it had a huge impact," the post read.
The park went on to say processed corn in the otherwise crunchy, cheesy snacks was softened by the humidity of the cave and "formed the perfect environment" to welcome and host fungi and microbial life.
Cave crickets, mites, spiders and flies can discover the snack and disperse the nutrients to the surrounding cave and formation. Molds also have the ability to spread high into nearby surfaces before fruiting, dying and releasing a stench. After that, the park service explained, "the cycle continues."
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Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico. (Getty Images)
In order to clean the mess, park rangers spent 20 minutes carefully removing foreign detritus and molds from cave surfaces.
"Some members of this fleeting ecosystem are cave-dwellers, but many of the microbial life and molds are not," the post read. "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."
"Great or small, we all leave an impact wherever we go. Let us all leave the world a better place than we found it," the park service added.