It’s pretty simple — leave no trace. But at least one person didn’t get the message and left behind a bag of Cheetos at Carlsbad Caverns National Park during a visit earlier this summer.

"The bag could have been there a day or two or maybe just hours, but those salty morsels of processed corn made soft by thick humidity triggered the growth of mold on the cavern floor and on nearby cave formations.

“To the ecosystem of the cave it had a huge impact,” the park noted in a social media post, explaining that cave crickets, mites, spiders and flies soon organized to eat and disperse the foreign mess, essentially spreading the contamination."

  • @jordanlundOPEnglish
    10•3 months ago

    “World changing” - “for the tiny microbes and insects that call this specialized subterranean environment home.”

    Not for the world at large, but for the microbiome. I could see the cave critters going “ZOMG! CHEETOS!”