SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
The Cheetos slogan, dangerously cheesy, took on a whole new meaning this summer after an incident at Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. A visitor dropped a bag of Cheetos off the trail and left it there. And for context, food is not allowed inside the caverns. But what happened next, Carlsbad Park rangers said, could be a, quote, "world-changing event." Within hours, the processed corn from the Cheetos created the perfect environment for chaos. Mold formed everywhere - on the cavern floor, on nearby cave formations. Critters like crickets and mites and spiders flocked to the bag, and then the contamination spread.
ROBERT MELNICK: My reaction was, oh, come on, folks. Even if it was an accident, how could people bring something like that into the cave?
DETROW: That's Robert Melnick. He's a professor emeritus at the University of Oregon, and for the last few years, he's been studying the cultural landscape of Carlsbad Caverns. That basically means how humans have interacted with the caves over time. He spends a lot of time thinking about mold.
MELNICK: The caves are a very, very sensitive environment, and they have the capacity to generate mold, which will then detract from other resources.
DETROW: Melnick has been studying the interaction between humans and national parks for over 40 years. One big trend he's identified...
MELNICK: There are more people who bring more things into the parks. You find a lot of, frankly, trash in every park. People drop stuff. They leave stuff.
DETROW: The National Park Service says visitors generate more than 70 million tons of trash every year. That's in the face of a decades-long campaign urging people to leave no trace. Melnick's job is to tell national parks how to navigate the human factor, meaning protecting the landscape while keeping it accessible.
MELNICK: We look at the walkways. We look at the handrails. We look at the benches. We look at the walls. They really are taking this on and saying, how can we make sure that the caves don't deteriorate into the future?
DETROW: It's a big question, but one thing is for sure, the answer does not involve Cheetos. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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