Located in New Mexico’s Chihuahuan Desert and home to high ancient sea ledges, deep rocky canyons, flowering cactus, and over 119 caves, Carlsbad Caverns National Park is an incredible destination for folks looking to explore landscapes both above and below ground.
Visitors are encouraged to wear sensible shoes with good traction to explore areas like The Big Room (the largest single cave chamber by volume in North America)Â where terrain can be slick from natural water drips and steep. Headlamps are also recommended to illuminate the many underground features of the park. One thing the park rangers are not in support of bringing on your next trip to Carlsbad Caverns National Park are the blue tooth wireless speakers that have unfortunately become commonplace on the trails around the world.
Blaring music while hiking is the height of egocentric behavior in National Parks as it disturbs not only the experience of other visitors but the wildlife that inhabits these incredible lands. The National Park Service is committed to the preservation of acoustical environments and noise reduction in parks guided by several laws, regulations, and policies including the NPS Organic Act, Redwoods Act of 1978, and Noise Control Act of 1972.
The rules of soundscape management can and will be enforced by our hard working National Park rangers but visitors should make their job a bit easy, respect trail etiquette and leave those speakers at home.
Carlsbad Caverns National Park:
Instead of blaring music while hiking, Ranger Ashley is wearing headphones so she can still enjoy her music without disrupting the experiences of others on the trail. Ranger Ashley can also follow this principle in many other ways as well, including using proper trail etiquette, respecting campsite quiet hours, and by following the rest of the Leave No Trace principles we’ve discussed.
NPS Soundscape Management Policies:
Park natural soundscape resources encompass all the natural sounds that occur in parks, including the physical capacity for transmitting those natural sounds and the interrelationships among park natural sounds of diff erent frequencies and volumes. Natural sounds occur within and beyond the range of sounds that humans can perceive, and they can be transmitted through air, water, or solid materials. The National Park Service will preserve, to the greatest extent possible, the natural soundscapes of parks.
Some natural sounds in the natural soundscape are also part of the biological or other physical resource components of the park. Examples of such natural sounds include:
- sounds produced by birds, frogs, or katydids to define territories or aid in attracting mates
- sounds produced by bats or porpoises to locate prey or navigate
- sounds received by mice or deer to detect and avoid predators or other danger
- sounds produced by physical processes, such as wind in the trees, claps of thunder, or falling water.
The Service will restore to the natural condition wherever possible those park soundscapes that have become degraded by unnatural sounds (noise), and will protect natural soundscapes from unacceptable impacts.
Using appropriate management planning, superintendents will identify what levels and types of unnatural sound constitute acceptable impacts on park natural soundscapes. The frequencies, magnitudes, and durations of acceptable levels of unnatural sound will vary throughout a park, being generally greater in developed areas. In and adjacent to parks, the Service will monitor human activities that generate noise that adversely aff ects park soundscapes, including noise caused by mechanical or electronic devices.
The Service will take action to prevent or minimize all noise that through frequency, magnitude, or duration adversely aff ects the natural soundscape or other park resources or values, or that exceeds levels that have been identifi ed through monitoring as being acceptable to or appropriate for visitor uses at the sites being monitored.