While the National Park Service (NPS) has launched many different campaigns over the years, ones that encourage visitors not to litter date back many decades.
The government agency overseeing all 63 of the country’s national parks has previously released statistics showing that it sorts through an average of 70 million pounds of garbage a year, while a spike in visitor numbers post-pandemic has exacerbated the problem.
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At the start of September, the NPS drew attention to an incident sparked by a discarded bag of Cheetos puff chips; a visitor to New Mexico’s Carlsbad Caverns National Park left it inside the largest cave chamber known as Big Room. The park is known for unique underground geological formations known as speleothems while the trail through the Big Room spans over 1.25 miles.
Small Cheetos bag sets off big problem at Carlsbad Caverns
While the visitor likely thought that one small bag would get picked up by a worker and not do much damage, it ended up attracting a rush of critters, bugs and rodents that had the potential to alter the ecosystem of the cave.
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“The processed corn, softened by the humidity of the cave, formed the perfect environment to host microbial life and fungi,” Carlsbad Caverns National Park wrote in a Sept. 6 Facebook (META) post. “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.”
Park authorities further said that rangers spent more than 20 minutes scrubbing the waste and accumulating mold created from the Cheetos bag that came as a result of a number of critters who are not normally part of the cave’s ecosystem coming in for a taste of corn snack.
For those reasons, nothing other than plain water is allowed when inside the caverns; prior to this incident, the NPS also sent out published advisories saying that sneaking food and drink on tours risks attracting raccoons and ringtails (another, smaller member of the raccoon family.)
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NPS to park visitors: ‘Leave the world a better place’
The bag was likely dropped accidentally as it still contained all the Cheetos inside but, according to the NPS, the visitor probably snuck it in, as everyone who goes inside the cave also goes through a short park orientation that explains the rules.
The area has an “Underground Lunchroom” that sells a menu of lunch options as well as tables where visitors can eat food they brought before or after their visit; it still offers views of some geological formations and is on many visitors’ bucket lists as a place where they can have lunch underground.
The Cheetos incident, meanwhile, pushed the NPS to remind visitors to be mindful of the impact seemingly small actions can have on the parks’ environment.
“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 NPS wrote further of the incident. “Great or small we all leave an impact wherever we go. Let us all leave the world a better place than we found it.”
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