Disclaimer: I consider littering to be the worst of the petty crimes. It’s easy to commit and does nothing to benefit the litterbug, while turning communities and our beautiful nation into an open-air garbage dump.
In a place like New Mexico’s wondrous Carlsbad Caverns, a seemingly harmless piece of trash can have devastating impacts on the future of the natural wonder.
The National Park Service announced the find, and its potential impact, in a Sept.6 post on the Carlsbad Caverns Facebook page.
“Great or small we all leave an impact wherever we go,” the NPS wrote.
“Here at Carlsbad Caverns, we love that we can host thousands of people in the cave each day. Incidental impacts can be difficult or impossible to prevent. Like the simple fact that every step a person takes into the cave leaves a fine trail of lint.”
A discarded bag of Cheetos found in the caverns, however, has radically crossed this line.
“Other impacts are completely avoidable,” the NPS wrote. “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.”
The bag itself, while unsightly, is easy enough to remove in a single piece. The bag’s contents are a different matter altogether.
“The processed corn, softened by the humidity of the cave, formed the perfect environment to host microbial life and fungi,” the NPS explained.
Have you ever visited Carlsbad Caverns?
Cheetos are undoubtedly unhealthy for humans, but for sensitive critters that call the caves home, the sudden introduction of the cheese snacks can be devastating.
“Cave crickets, mites, spiders and flies soon organize into a temporary food web, dispersing the nutrients to the surrounding cave and formations,” the NPS continued. “Molds spread higher up the nearby surfaces, fruit, die and stink. And the cycle continues.”
Park employees were forced to spend nearly half an hour in a painstaking search to purge the area of any crumbs and trash left behind by the careless litterbug.
“Rangers spent twenty minutes carefully removing the foreign detritus and molds from the cave surfaces,” the NPS wrote. “Some members of this fleeting ecosystem are cave-dwellers, but many of the microbial life and molds are not.
“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 small but impactful piece of trash, as well as the park’s full statement, can be seen in the Facebook post below.
Call it what you want: selfishness, laziness or just a general ignorance, but discarding this piece of trash in the caverns itself should see the person responsible hit with a ban from the park.
Carlsbad Caverns, like other natural wonders in the United States, is a shared resource and a shared responsibility for all citizens.
If the public falls into the mindset that our country is a trash can, it won’t be long before America will no longer be “The Beautiful.”
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