US cave system’s bats and insects face existential threat: discarded Cheetos

Full bag of snack left in cave occasioned National Park Service to educate public about delicate ecosystems

A full bag of Cheetos, discarded by a subterranean visitor to the Big Room in Carlsbad Caverns national park in New Mexico, has led the US National Park Service to issue a warning that discarded food could have a huge impact" on the cave's delicate and at-risk ecosystem.

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 said in its post about the garbage that was recently discovered there, threatening the balance of the unique cave system environment.