Plain water is the only thing that visitors are allowed to consume in the huge cave in Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico. Cheetos are a no-go, and the latest park visitor who dropped a bag full of them created a “major impact” on the cave’s ecosystem, park rangers said Friday in a Facebook post.
“On the scale of human perspective, a spilled snack bag may seem trivial, but to cave life, it can change the world,” Park said in his post about the debris found off the track in the great room.
“The processed corn, softened by the humidity in 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 that spreads the nutrients to the surrounding cave and formations. Mold spreads rise higher on the nearby surfaces, fruit, die and stink. And the cycle continues.”
The park said rangers spent 20 minutes carefully removing mold and foreign debris from surfaces inside the cave, noting that while some members of the ecosystem that rose from the snacks were cave dwellers, “much of the microbial life and molds are not.”
The post called the particular impact on the cave “entirely avoidable,” and contrasted it with the difficult-to-prevent fine trails of fluff left by each visitor.
“Big or small, we all make an impact wherever we go. Let’s all leave the world a better place than we found it,” the post urged park visitors.
The park’s website says that eating and drinking anything other than plain water attracts animals into the cave.
The Big Room in Carlsbad Caverns National Park is the largest single cave chamber by volume in North America. It is accessible via a relatively flat 1.25 mile (2 km) trail. The cave was formed millions of years ago when sulfuric acid dissolved limestone and created cave passages.
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