Plain water is the only thing visitors are allowed to consume inside the huge cavern at Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico. Cheetos are a no-go, and the recent park visitor who dropped a bag full of them created a huge impact on the cave’s ecosystem. A spilled snack bag may seem trivial, but to the life of the cave it can be world changing. 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 organized into a temporary food web, dispersing the nutrients to the surrounding cave and formations. Molds spread higher up the nearby surfaces where it dies and begins to stink. Park rangers spent 20 minutes carefully removing molds and foreign debris from surfaces inside the cave, nothing that while some members of the ecosystem that rose from the snacks were cave-dwellers, many of the microbial life and molds are not. Officials called the Cheetos incident a “completely unavoidable” impact, contrasting it with the hard-to-prevent fine trails of lint left by each visitor. The park’s website says that eating and drinking anything other than plain water attracts animals into the cavern. “Sometimes this can be a gum wrapper or a tissue, other times it can unfortunately mean human waste, spit, or chewing tobacco,” the site said. Visitors are asked to make sure they don’t leave trash in the cavern and to use designated restrooms. The Big Room at Carlsbad Caverns National Park is the largest single cave chamber by volume in North America. It's accessible via a relatively flat 1.25-mile trail. The cavern was formed millions of years ago when sulfuric acid dissolved limestone, creating cave passages.
How a Cheetos Bag Had a World-Changing Effect on Carlsbad Caverns National Park
Plain water is the only thing visitors are allowed to consume inside the huge cavern at Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico. Cheetos are a no-go, and the recent park visitor who dropped a bag full of them created a huge impact on the cave’s ecosystem. A spilled snack bag may seem trivial, but to the life of the cave it can be world changing. 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 organized into a temporary food web, dispersing the nutrients to the surrounding cave and formations. Molds spread higher up the nearby surfaces where it dies and begins to stink. Park rangers spent 20 minutes carefully removing molds and foreign debris from surfaces inside the cave, nothing that while some members of the ecosystem that rose from the snacks were cave-dwellers, many of the microbial life and molds are not. Officials called the Cheetos incident a “completely unavoidable” impact, contrasting it with the hard-to-prevent fine trails of lint left by each visitor. The park’s website says that eating and drinking anything other than plain water attracts animals into the cavern. “Sometimes this can be a gum wrapper or a tissue, other times it can unfortunately mean human waste, spit, or chewing tobacco,” the site said. Visitors are asked to make sure they don’t leave trash in the cavern and to use designated restrooms. The Big Room at Carlsbad Caverns National Park is the largest single cave chamber by volume in North America. It's accessible via a relatively flat 1.25-mile trail. The cavern was formed millions of years ago when sulfuric acid dissolved limestone, creating cave passages.