How a dropped bag of crisps caused ‘world changing’ chaos in a US cave

‘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.’

This isn’t a quote from a world-famous philosopher. Nor is it the speech from the square-jawed superhero that talks the big bad out of destroying the world.

No, it’s from a US national park talking about a half-empty bag of Cheetos.

Carlsbad Caverns National Park is one of New Mexico’s biggest tourist attractions. Last year, close to 400,000 people stopped by.

Deep in the deserts of the southwest, the park is home to everything from ruddy brown crickets and rare rattlesnakes to 17 bat species and super-powered microbes.

But park officials have had to remind hardcore spelunkers or those just eager to get that perfect shot in the 1.25-mile-long Big Room Trail not to eat Cheetos.

Park rangers spent 20 minutes carefully scraping off mould and microbial growth along the trail to the Big Room, the largest single cave chamber by volume in North America, last week.

And this was all because a recent visitor dropped a bag of Cheetos.

For them, losing their snack was probably just a tad annoying at best. But to the countless tiny microorganisms crawling around the cave, this crisp packet can be ‘world-changing’.

The processed corn in the Cheetos, made mushy by the humidity of the cave, ‘created the perfect environment to host microbial life and fungi,’ park officials on Facebook last Friday.

‘Cave crickets, mites, spiders and flies soon organise into a temporary food web, dispersing the [Cheetos’] nutrients to the surrounding cave and formations,’ the post added.

‘Moulds spread higher up the nearby surfaces, fruit, die and stink. And the cycle continues.’

The ecosystem in the Carlsbad Caverns is a balancing act – and one years in the making. The Big Room was formed millions of years ago when sulfuric acid dissolved limestone, forming cave passages.

Any critters calling the caverns home already have it rough. No light, next to no water and food isn’t growing on trees – literally, there’s none.

So having giant scary humans stomping around the caves is already pushing the ecosystem to its limit, let alone when people treat the park like a ‘big trash can’.

‘Sometimes this can be a gum wrapper or a tissue, other times it can, unfortunately, mean human waste, spit, or chewing tobacco,’ park officials said.

‘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.’

The park’s ecosystem can so easily be shaken that only plain water is permitted in the cavern. Anything else and officials worry it’ll attract raccoons and other pests.

Carlsbad Caverns has its limits, and park officials asked tourists to respect that in a rather profound way by thinking of the ‘little things’ we do each day.

‘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,’ the post says.

‘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.’

Humans can’t exactly stop themselves from leaving lint and hair around the place – they can, however, stop themselves from littering.

‘Great or small we all leave an impact wherever we go,’ the park’s post adds.

‘Let us all leave the world a better place than we found it.’

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