If You Drop a Bag of Cheetos…
When a visitor dropped a bag of Cheetos on the floor of a cave, big problems emerged.
Carlsbad Caverns National Park
A Cheetos bag sat on the floor of a cave, causing many problems before officials cleaned up the crumbs.
How bad is it to drop one piece of garbage on the ground? When an empty bag of Cheetos (a cheesy corn snack) ended up on the floor of a cave, it turned out to be a very big deal.
The bag was discovered inside a cave at Carlsbad Caverns, a national park in New Mexico. Each year about 500,000 people visit Carlsbad Caverns. They’re not supposed to bring food into the caves, which are full of delicate life forms.
“A spilled snack bag may seem [unimportant], but to the life of the cave it can be world changing,” a National Park Service (NPS) official wrote on Facebook.
Carlsbad Caverns National Park
Mold grew where a bag of Cheetos was dropped in a cave.
Inside the humid (moist) cave environment, the dust and crumbs from the Cheetos bag began to soften. Mold (a type of fungus) began to grow on the Cheeto dust. Crickets, mites, spiders, and flies came to eat the mold and ended up spreading it around to other parts of the cave. Luckily, cave experts at the park were able to clean up the mess, using a toothbrush and other tools.
But while this problem was solved, experts say people need to be careful about what they leave behind. Every environment contains ecosystems, or communities of living things that are connected and depend on one another. Litter can upset the balance of an ecosystem and affect many life forms.
People who visit U.S. national parks create millions of tons of trash every year. The NPS says park visitors should leave no trace, which means that when they leave the parks, there should be no sign they were ever there.
After all, if one bag of Cheetos makes such a difference, think of what many tons of trash can do!
