US cave system’s bats and insects face existential threat: discarded Cheetos

Full bag of snack left in cave occasioned National Park Service to educate public about delicate ecosystems

A full bag of Cheetos, discarded by a subterranean visitor to the Big Room in Carlsbad Caverns national park in New Mexico, has led the US National Park Service to issue a warning that discarded food could have a “huge impact” on the cave’s delicate and at-risk ecosystem.

“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 said in its post about the garbage that was recently discovered there, threatening the balance of the unique cave system environment.

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

The park says that eating and drinking anything other than plain water attracts animals into the cavern, home to 17 bat species numbering between 400,000 and 800,000, including the Brazilian free-tailed bat, that have so far avoided the white-nose syndrome that has been devastating US bat colonies.

The park said rangers spent 20 minutes removing molds and foreign debris from surfaces inside the cave. The discarded bag of Cheetos, the parks said, had introduced microbial life and molds that were not part of the natural ecosystem and were “completely avoidable”.

The delicacy of cave ecosystems is well known due to their dependence on limited food sources and being acutely susceptible to disruption from human activity.

The parks service reminded visitors in a follow-up post about the principle of “leave no trace” to disposing waste. “Contrary to popular belief, the cave is NOT a big trash can,” it said. But rangers, it continued, still pick up trash. “Sometimes this can be a gum wrapper or a tissue, other times it can unfortunately mean human waste, spit or chewing tobacco.”

The post pointed out that every step that a visitor to the cave makes leaves a fine trail of lint, “but other impacts are completely avoidable. Like a full snack bag dropped off-trail in the Big Room. To the owner of the snack bag, the impact is likely incidental. But to the ecosystem of the cave it had a huge impact.”

Cover photo: The park service said the processed corn in the snack formed a perfect environment to host microbial life and fungi. Composite: Alamy