A Bag of Cheetos Created an Ecological Nightmare in Carlsbad Caverns

Who knew a bag of Cheetos could do so much ecological harm?

A tourist’s misplaced Cheetos bag apparently wreaked havoc inside Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico. According to park rangers, someone must have recently dropped their mid-hike snack off the Big Room Trail while exploring the cave. 

Whether or not it was an intentional act of littering, the effect remains the same.

“To the owner of the snack bag, the impact is likely incidental,” rangers said in a news release on Facebook. “But to the ecosystem of the cave it had a huge impact.”

“The processed corn, softened by the humidity of the cave, formed the perfect environment to host microbial life and fungi,” the post continued. “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.”

If left unnoticed, the issue could have grown out of control. Thankfully, however, rangers spotted the bag and were able to remediate the problem. However, this was no small feat.

“Rangers spent twenty minutes carefully removing the foreign detritus and molds from the cave surfaces,” the Facebook statement read. “Some members of this fleeting ecosystem are cave-dwellers, but many of the microbial life and molds are not.”

This story is the perfect anecdote to reference when reminding people not to litter. While it might seem like a harmless act in the moment, it can actually lead to much larger concerns down the road.

“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,” rangers said.

So, maybe think twice before tossing your trash on the ground—or at the very least, finish your snacks before they turn into a source of fungi.