Forgotten Cheetos snack bag can have 'world-changing' impact, U.S. national park says

A Cheetos bag is abandoned in a cave at Carlsbad Caverns National Park. (National Park Service)

A U.S. national park is cautioning tourists over how a small bag of Cheetos could have an enormous impact on the surrounding environment.

Carlsbad Caverns National Park posted a photo of a crumpled Cheetos snack bag on Friday, saying it was left off-trail at the park in New Mexico.

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Carlsbad Caverns says some incidents can be difficult or impossible to prevent, noting that even a single step a person takes in the cave can leave a trail of lint. But it also said other incidents, such as forgetting trash, are "completely avoidable."

"A spilled snack bag may seem trivial, but to the life of the cave it can be world changing," wrote national park staff in a Facebook post.

Impact on ecosystem

The snack bag had a "huge impact" on the cave's ecosystem, Carlsbad Caverns wrote.

"The processed corn, softened by the humidity of the cave, formed the perfect environment to host microbial life and fungi," it 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."

It said rangers spent 20 minutes carefully removing the foreign items and moulds from the cave.

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"Some members of this fleeting ecosystem are cave-dwellers, but many of the microbial life and molds are not," Carlsbad Caverns wrote. "Great or small we all leave an impact wherever we go. How we choose to interact with others and the world we share together has its effects moment by moment."

Carlsbad Caverns is one of more than 300 limestone caves in a fossil reef formed around 265 million years ago. It was officially designated as a national park in 1930.

The snack bag was dropped in the enormous cave chamber called the Big Room, known for "spectacular views, cave formations of all shapes and sizes, and a rope ladder used by explorers in 1924," according to Carlsbad Caverns on its website.