You might not think much about a discarded bag of chips, but Carlsbad Caverns National Park pled visitors to follow the cave’s “Leave No Trace” principles after they discovered litter off trail.
The image they shared showed a discarded bag of Cheetos that had landed off trail in the Big Room, the largest single cave chamber by volume in North America. Surrounding the bag is a white spread of mold and fungi.
“The processed corn, softened by the humidity of the cave, formed the perfect environment to host microbial life and fungi,” according to the park.
Discarded food also has the potential to attract cave crickets, mites, spiders and flies, which disperse the food to other areas of the cave, thus spreading the damage.
The bright orange bag was spotted off trail by a ranger during one of the regular sweeps that park staff make through the Big Room, reported the Associated Press.
It reportedly took twenty minutes for park rangers to carefully remove the detritus and mold from the area around the Cheeto bag. “At the scale of human perspective, a single spilled snack bag may seem trivial, but to the life of a cave it can be world changing,” the park’s post explains.
Only plain water is permitted in the cavern, although there is an Underground Lunchroom area. Park rangers speculate that the Cheetos bag may have been taken from the lunchroom into the cavern.
Only about 1,000 visitors are allowed into the cave each day. Visitors can reserve tickets online before visiting. Even with the limited number allowances, an abundance of hair, skin and microbes can be introduced into the ecosystem every day.
“So it can be really, really bad or it can just be us and all the stuff we’re shedding,” Diana Northup, a microbiologist who specializes in cave environments, told AP. “But here’s the other side of the coin: The only way you can protect caves is for people to be able to see them and experience them.”
“The biggest thing,” she said, “is you have to get people to value and want to preserve the caves and let them know what they can do to have that happen.”
