An important part of enjoying nature is leaving no trace. This was made evident recently after a visitor to a national park dropped a bag of Cheetos, which wreaked havoc on an ecosystem.
Carlsbad Caverns National Park detailed the situation on social media, and The Washington Post picked up the story. A visitor dropped the snack bag in the Big Room, and the contents, aided by organisms and wildlife in the cave, took on a life of their own.
The park noted that the cave's humidity softened the processed corn, which became a host to microbial life and fungi. Crickets, mites, spiders, and flies found the package and scattered its nutrients throughout the cave, with molds spreading, fruiting, dying, and stinking up the area.
Rangers had to carefully remove the resulting mess.
"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 wrote.
The karst formation is millions of years old and has been explored by all kinds of visitors since prehistoric times, according to the National Park Service. Among the rules of the New Mexico destination is that guests cannot eat in the cavern.
This helps protect the delicate ecosystem and keep out wildlife that is not native to the area.
It also follows the NPS' leave no trace guidelines, which are followed by responsible outdoorspeople all over. They say to plan ahead and prepare, properly dispose of waste, leave what you find, be considerate of other visitors, and more.
This scientifically supported code of conduct ensures that we minimize our impact on plants, animals, other people, and entire ecosystems — and "can be applied anywhere, at any time, while taking part in recreational activities," per the NPS.
The importance of these rules cannot be overstated. Those who ignore park warnings can create deadly circumstances, and even what seems like innocent behavior — such as listening to music or building a cairn — can cause lasting impacts.
"Great or small we all leave an impact wherever we go," the park stated. "Let us all leave the world a better place than we found it."
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