In the southeast corner of New Mexico, near the Texas border, you'll find the Carlsbad Caverns. This Big Room at this national park is the largest cave chamber in the United States. It's so big, it can fit six football fields, end to end. And it's adorned with plenty of stalactites and stalagmites.
During peak season, up to 2,000 people visit each day. Aside from the historic Underground Lunchroom, tourists are forbidden from bringing in any food or drink except for clean drinking water. But people don't always follow the rules.
This is the actual bag of Cheetos that was dropped by a visitor to Carlsbad Caverns National Park, in New Mexico. Photo courtesy of the National Park Service.
Last year, during the summer of 2023, park employees discovered a Cheetos bag on the ground in the Big Room. They cleaned it up as soon as they found it but it still managed to alter the delicate ecosystem of the cave.
"We don't know how long the bag was there, we assume maybe a couple days," Ward says. Despite the massive scale of the room, even a small snack bag can have a major impact.
"Life started to find a way in that area. Fungi and mold, stuff like that, started to grow around the area of impact, where the bag was. Because of that, other lifeforms — like mites, sprighairs, and other things, even cave spiders — started to congregate in that area," Ward says.
A temporary food web sprung up and the mold spread higher on the nearby surface. "The ranger who had to clean it up had to use a toothbrush to scrub it out of some of the cave popcorn that was on the surrounding walls," Ward says.