Tourists drop sweets in caves that could 'change the world of caves', national park warns
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As the number of tourists visiting Japan increases, the problem of overtourism, which causes inconvenience to local residents due to violations of etiquette, is becoming more apparent, but humans are not the only ones who are troubled by this 'tourist pollution.' Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico, USA, has filed a lawsuit claiming that a tourist who visited a cave, home to a precious and delicate ecosystem, threw away some sweets, causing an impact equivalent to a natural disaster on the creatures living there.
Dropped Cheetos bag in national park unleashes an army of cave critters | Daily Mail Online
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13834969/cheetos-bag-national-park-cave-critters.html
US cave system's bats and insects face existential threat: discarded Cheetos | New Mexico | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/sep/10/cheetos-carlsbad-caverns-national-park
On September 6, 2024, the official Facebook account of Carlsbad Caverns National Park, which is also registered as a World Heritage Site, posted a photo of a bag of Cheetos that had fallen on the floor of a cave with the comment, 'Every time a person enters a cave, there are some impacts that are difficult or impossible to prevent, such as fine lint being dropped, but other impacts are avoidable. For example, someone dropped a full bag of snacks off the trail in the Big Room (the largest underground chamber in Carlsbad Caverns). While it may have been accidental to the person who dropped the snacks, it had a major impact on the cave's ecosystem.'
Caves are such a food-poor environment that some cave creatures can survive starvation by staying motionless for seven years , so bringing food from outside into a cave can cause great disruption to the ecosystem.
In this case, a national park ranger had to carefully remove mold and detritus from the cave's topsoil for about 20 minutes to prevent disruption to the ecosystem.
'To humans, a spilled snack bag may seem like a small thing, but to cave creatures it can change the world forever,' said the official account of Carlsbad Caverns National Park. 'We leave an impact wherever we go, no matter how big or small, and we all want to leave the world better than we found it.'
By Mathieu Lebreton
Carlsbad Caverns National Park is home to between 400,000 and 800,000 bats from 17 species, including the Brazilian free-tailed bat, which has escaped white-nose syndrome , an infectious disease that has had a devastating effect on bats in North America.
Because the cave's ecosystem is delicate, the national park urges visitors to adhere to the 'Leave No Trace principle.'
In a subsequent post, Carlsbad Caverns National Park said, 'In case you didn't know, caves aren't actually big trash cans. Nevertheless, rangers often pick up trash as they walk the trails at the end of each day. Sometimes this is gum wrappers and tissues, but unfortunately sometimes it's human waste, spit, and chewing tobacco. Please help keep the trails clean by not littering along the trails and by using designated restrooms.'
Spilling food isn't the only example of how tourists' carelessness and mischief can have a major impact on the environment. In August 2024, the National Parks Agency reported that at least 60,000 cave structures had been destroyed, many of which were believed to have been illegally removed by tourists who had taken items from the caves to make souvenirs.
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in Creature, Posted by log1l_ks