The New Mexico park says that a discarded snack bag may seem trivial but the impact to the ecosystem can be huge, urging visitors to leave the world better than they found it.

Rangers recently found a bag of Cheetos (still full of food) dropped off the trail in the Big Room, which is the largest single cave chamber by volume in North America. “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 post said.

After a visitor dropped the snack in Carlsbad Caverns, the “foreign detritus” sparked mold and microbial growth that disturbed the delicate ecosystem, the park said.

Carlsbad Caverns National Park officials in New Mexico recently condemned the leaving of a Cheetos snack bag in one of the caves, noting how it disrupted the underground ecosystem.

Park Service employee Erich B. Koenig discovered spilled junk food inside New Mexico’s Carlsbad Caverns in 2023. His post about human impact on delicate ecosystems sparked a glut of media coverage.

A simple bag of Cheetos is responsible for causing a major issue at a national park in New Mexico that has park officials calling out those who break the rules.

Plain water is the only thing visitors are allowed to consume inside the huge cavern at Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico. Cheetos are a no-go, and the recent park visitor who dropped a bag full of them created a “huge impact” on the cave’s ecosystem, park rangers said Friday in a Facebook post.

“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,” the national park said. “And the cycle continues.”

The park noted that the cave's humidity softened the processed corn, which became a host to microbial life and fungi. Officials respond after tourist's dropped bag of Cheetos threatens national park ecosystem: 'A spilled snack bag may seem trivial,

A dropped bag of Cheetos at Carlsbad Caverns National Park significantly disrupted the delicate cave ecosystem, triggering mold growth and attracting insects that spread contamination. Rangers quickly cleaned up the mess,