“Great or small we all leave an impact wherever we go,” writes New Mexico’s Carlsbad Caverns National Park in a poignant Facebook post. The photo featured in the post shows a Cheetos bag on the floor of Carlsbad Caverns’ Big Room. It’s not just a piece of trash, the park argues. It’s much, much more.
“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,” writes Carlsbad Caverns in the post. “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.”
What sort of huge impact could a Cheetos bag have in Carlsbad Caverns? Well, the National Park Service (NPS) site doesn’t leave it up to people’s imaginations. The park broke down the impact in its post.
“The processed corn, softened by the humidity of the cave, formed the perfect environment to host microbial life and fungi. 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 explained.
Carlsbad Caverns then goes on to explain how rangers spent time carefully removing the “foreign detritus and molds” from the cave surfaces. “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 concludes.
See the full post here:
Is Trash Just Trash?
Carlsbad Caverns suggests trash is not just trash. Trash has an impact, and whether it’s a big impact or a small one, that impact is often negative for nature. Why not take care to leave no trace, just in case?
Do you agree with Carlsbad Caverns’ take on the Cheetos bag?