CARLSBAD CAVERNS NATIONAL PARK – A little bag of Cheetos caused big problems in Carlsbad Caverns National Park.
Someone dropped the full snack bag in the Big Room, off the trail. It’s not clear whether that was done intentionally, or unintentionally, but it certainly made a mess. Molds spread high up on the nearby surfaces, causing an odor. The snacks attracted cave crickets, mites, spiders, and flies. Rangers with the New Mexico national park say they spent 20 minutes cleaning it all up, before it could cause more problems in the fragile and unique environment.
“Some members of this fleeting ecosystem are cave-dwellers, but many of the microbial life and molds are not,” said the National Park Service. “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 posted this image on its Facebook page and it has received widespread attention and outrage, due to the lack of care demonstrated by whoever dropped the bag and the major impact it generated within the cave.
NATIONAL PARK NEWS
