When rangers warn you about leaving litter at national parks, they mean it. A left-behind bag of Cheetos is having a huge negative impact on one park's ecosystem.
Someone recently dropped a bag of Cheetos at Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico. In a Facebook post, park rangers decried that the trash is negatively impacting the ecosystem of cave. They explained, "Great or small we all leave an impact wherever we go. How we choose to interact with others and the world we share together has its effects moment by moment. And we feel it."
They explained how one small action such as a discarded bag of Cheetos can have a big effect. They wrote, "When we are greeted with a smile. When we share the first rays of dawn with someone we care about. Or when someone imposes their frustration on us, or when someone we care about forgets to pack the sunscreen and snacks."
They continued, "In the same way, we affect the world around us in subtle ways too. 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. Like the simple fact that every step a person takes into the cave leaves a fine trail of lint."
Cheetos Affects Cave
The park rangers explained that the processed corn in the Cheetos houses its own microbial life. That has an effect on the environment in the cave.
They wrote, "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."
They continued, "The processed corn, softened by the humidity of the cave, formed the perfect environment to host microbial life and fungi. 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."
Rangers explained that they had to spend 20 minutes trying to remove foreign bodies from the cave system. They wrote, "Rangers spent twenty minutes carefully removing the foreign detritus and molds from the cave surfaces. Some members of this fleeting ecosystem are cave-dwellers, but many of the microbial life and molds are not. 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."
