A Bag of Cheetos Had a Huge Impact on a National Park’s Ecosystem

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico – A bag of Cheetos falls on the floor. Seems inconsequential, right?

Barely.

Park rangers at Carlsbad Caverns National Park in southern New Mexico describe the event as a “worldwide shift” for the tiny microbes and insects that have taken up residence in the specialized underground environment. The bag could have been there for a day or two, or even hours, but those salty bits of processed corn, softened by high humidity, triggered mold growth on the cave floor and nearby rock formations.

“This had a huge impact on the cave ecosystem,” the park noted in a social media post, explaining that crickets, mites, spiders and cave flies quickly organized to eat and disperse the foreign debris, essentially spreading the contamination.

The bright orange bag was spotted off the trail by a ranger during one of the regular inspections park staff conduct in the Great Hall, the largest underground chamber in North America by volume, at the end of each day. They look for wandering visitors and any trash or other waste that may have been left on the paved trail.

The Great Hall is a popular spot in Carlsbad Caverns. It’s a magical expanse filled with towering stalagmites, delicate stalactites, and clusters of cave popcorn.

From this underground wonderland in New Mexico to the lakeshores of Nevada, the tributaries of the Grand Canyon and the lagoons of Florida, park rangers and volunteers pick up tons of trash left behind by visitors each year in an ongoing battle to keep unique ecosystems from being compromised while allowing visitor access.

According to the National Park Service, more than 300 million people visit national parks each year, bringing and generating nearly 70 million tons of waste, most of which ends up where it belongs: in trash cans and recycling bins.

But for the rest of the discarded snack bags and other debris, it often takes work to gather the trash, and organizations like Leave No Trace have been spreading the word at trailheads and online.

At Carlsbad Caverns, volunteers comb the caverns for lint. A five-day operation has netted up to 50 pounds. Rangers also have sweep-and-dump kits for more delicate and sometimes unpleasant tasks that can include cleaning up human waste along the trail.

“It’s such a dark area that sometimes people don’t notice her there. So they walk through her and she follows them all the way through the cave,” said Joseph Ward, a park guide who works specifically to spread the “Leave No Trace” message to park visitors and classrooms.

Ranger kits can include gloves, trash bags, water, bleach mixtures for decontamination, vacuum cleaners and even bamboo toothbrushes and tweezers for hard-to-reach places.

As for the spilled Cheetos, Ward told The Associated Press that it could have been avoided because the park does not allow food beyond the confines of the historic underground dining area.

After the bag was discovered in July, park cavers decided how best to clean it. Most of the dirt was scooped up and a toothbrush was used to remove rings of mold and fungus that had spread into the formations in the nearby cave. It was a 20-minute job.

Some jobs can take hours and involve multiple park employees, Ward said.

Robert Melnick, a professor emeritus at the University of Oregon, has studied the cultural landscape of Carlsbad Caverns, including a historic wooden staircase that has become another breeding ground for exotic molds and fungi. He and his team submitted a report to the park this week that details these resources and makes recommendations for how the park can manage them in the future.

The balance for park managers in Carlsbad and elsewhere, Melnick said, is to meet the dual mandate of preserving and protecting landscapes while making them accessible.

“I’m not sure how you would monitor that, other than constantly reminding people that underground, caves, are a very, very sensitive natural environment,” he said.

Calls to treat the caves with respect are posted on signs throughout the park, rangers give visitors directions before they go underground, and reminders of the do’s and don’ts are printed on the back of every ticket stub.

But sometimes there is a disconnect between awareness and personal responsibility, said JD Tanner, director of education and training at Leave No Trace.

Many people may be aware of the need to “keep things intact,” but Tanner said the message doesn’t always translate into action or there’s a lack of understanding that small actions — even leaving a piece of trash — can have irreversible damage in a fragile ecosystem.

“If someone doesn’t have a personal interest in preserving these environments, they might not take the rules seriously,” Tanner said.

Diana Northup, a microbiologist who spent years studying cave environments around the world, once walked up the main passageway of Carlsbad Caverns to record everything humans left behind.

“So it’s just one thing among many,” she said of Cheetos.

In high season, up to 2,000 people travel through the caves every day, carrying with them fragments of hair and skin, which may contain their own microbes.

“It could be very serious, or it could be us and all the things we’re putting out,” Northup said of human contamination in caves. “But there’s the other side of the coin: The only way to protect caves is to allow people to see them and experience them.”

“The most important thing,” she said, “is to get people to value and want to preserve the caves and to let them know what they can do to achieve that.”