World's Largest Living Organism Is Dying

>To test their idea, Rogers and his colleagues fenced in 7 hectares of the grove. They also tried to stimulate tree growth by burning vegetation, clearing juniper bushes growing among the trees, and cutting mature aspens, all of which can cause new trees to sprout.

>After three years, the part of Pando that was inside the fence contained more than eight times as many stems per hectare as an unfenced area. Though the burning, clearing and cutting enhanced growth, simply excluding browsing animals drove most of the change, Rogers reported last week at the North American Congress for Conservation Biology in Madison, Wisconsin.

>“It was a neat surprise that we can get pretty good results with fencing alone,” Rogers says.

>What works for Pando might not work elsewhere, however. Installing barriers around large regions of the American west or whole mountain ranges would be impractical, Rogers notes.

>Sam St. Clair at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, agrees that the fence fix probably won’t work for aspens everywhere. “At a large scale, fencing isn’t going to work,” St. Clair says. “It’s too expensive.”

> Still, for Pando at least, it looks like the proverb had it right: Good fences make good neighbours.

Damn. I just noticed this is just a bit more than a couple days old. not sure how strict mods are on that. please delete it if you want. I just thought it was an interesting different article and still fairly recent.

>>64707
its good. a nice change from the usual tripe.
i enjoyed it a lot.

>>64707
Yea like what the other anon said. I find this kind of article interesting.

This is why I hate plants. They can be one thing, everywhere. Fuck plants.

>>64705
As a vegan, i find this thread deeply confounding.

>>64707
>/News/
>Having mods
Kek, you must be new here. This board doesn't have any rules
This is a good post regardless, better than the constant race-baiting we usually see

>>64741
fucking plant murderer
How can you be so unsophisticated as to get your nutrients from living things?
talk to me when you've fed off rocks and sand for a year

So... Americans did what the europeans are doing and got suprised by previously confirmed results?

>>64741
>>64748
Why do you hate our leafy friends?
Why haven't you learned to photosynthesize yet?

>>64749
Results aren't real until we Americans do it.

>>64705
>we're gonna build a fence, and the cattle are going to pay for it!

Extend deer season, and slowly encourage cattle producers to switch to Buffalo or buffalo crosses. They are tasty, and compatible with American environments in the Western States.

Limit beef production to Midwest Prairie and I guess Southeast, though black Angus and most non Brahma breeds look like they're dying of heatstroke in summer.

This would really help with sustainability and keep up with America/the world's red meat consumption.

>>64793
Chea with moo-ney tsst tsst

>>64705
Fascinating article, as a mycologist, I will always believe the "humongous fungus" in oregon is undisputedly the largest living organism, but I see the point they make about it in terms of overall biomass.

The real question most people are afraid to ask is, what if it's better to let it die? In a changing world and global climate, there will be a new normal for survival of the fittest. If we create artificial boundaries (no man-made solution will be perfect), aren't we really just preventing the organism from being stressed enough to adapt to its changing ecology? The question needs to be asked if we're really benefiting nature in the long run, it's way more complex than a lot of people consider, even professional ecologists.

>>64705
But walls are bad the media told me think of the poor wild animals they should be allowed to leech all they want!

>>64821
Because it isn't natural or environmental, it is domestic cattle and overpopulated deer that are doing the overwhelming majority of the damage to it. In the article they explained that simply fencing it off was a solution.

>>64823
Humans are part of the environment. The things we do aren't mystically removed from nature, we are part of it, and I think the point he'ss trying to make is that sometimes nature changes and things die, or adapt

>>64830
Humans are responsible for the environment. They fenced off 7 hectares and noticed an extreme difference. It is really simple to counter, honestly.

There are also larger, more responsible livestock producers who don't let their product wander onto protected property, or other people's land.

>>64707
There have been stories posted here thst are over a year old along with strawpolls and blogposts. There's no moderation on this board.

>>64836
There was moderation for a few hours on the first day but then they just stopped caring.
>They do it for free

>>64809
Australian beef is nicer anyway. America needs to switch to buffalo just for the fact that it's different, and buffalo meat would be a product the US has no competitors in.

As well as the fact that they fit in better with the American environment because thats where they're actually from.

>>64821
Isn't being interesting enough for us to want to protect a valid "adaptation"? We're part of nature too, you know.

>>64705
>> But Pando is dying. Hungry deer and cattle have been eating its young stems
hunt the deer and slaughter the cattle, bring their numbers down......problem solved

>>64843
https://youtu.be/D5Y-pJDgJT8?t=2m40s

>>64821
Letting it die?
And here I thought you were a fun guy.

>>64867
That isn't an Australian meat pie. I don't even know what the fuck that thing is. It doesn't even have gravy in it, what the fuck?

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat_pie_(Australia_and_New_Zealand)

>>64706
while I respect living examples of ancient majesty, dievack is a natural part of the adaptive cycles, putting organisms in nurseries only makes them weaker, most species only improve by suffering the brutalities of natural death. preserving pando in the wild, rather than taking a portion to preserve separately harms our biodiversity

>>65154
Personally I think we should try to preserve the DNA and some live samples of endangered species, for an extremely long time. Then like 1000 years from now, when we have the technology, drop them on a terraformed planet and let em go nuts.

>>65155
We already do. Have been since at least the 70s.

>>64878
Yanks do that a lot, make an awful bastardised version of something and advertise it as authentic.

i like it when it gets warm

>>64705
natural selection will do its thing

>>65355
Right, and the barren plains of dry dirt that will replace this forest will be a shining example of evolution for us all to enjoy.

>>65355
>>65154
But we're not talking about a specie, that's one single member. From a evolutionary point of view, this member went all weird, and if we protect it it'd only be for "fun", or because it's being killed by human activity, so trying to stop killing it seems to be the "right" thing to do.

>>64705
Time to release the wolves again.

>>64705
Can't believe I've never heard of Pando before. I thought the world's largest organism was a whale, or my fatass neighbor.

>fence too expensive
Do what the brits did in india; plant a hugeass hedge. Make it super thorny and fruiting, and deer will eat the fruit but not fuck with the thorns. It won't stop all herbivores but it'll discourage most of them, and it pretty much takes care of itself besides needing to be layed every 7-10 years.

>>65982
>needing to be layed every 7 to 10 years
Don't we all

>>66030
Are you a Vulcan?

>>66097
Who wants to know?

>>66030
Kek

building a wall is never the answer

>>66271
Agree property rights do not exist, nothing belongs to anyone!

Why not just try to find out why the balance is off and restore it instead of adding more things to the equation making it harder to find solutions in the future?

>>66290
And why not just find out what causes Parkinson's disease instead of giving people a cocktail of medicines that will cause side effects?

>>64705
I hope your mother makes a full recovery.

>>66272
You're very close to the truth! Keep going!

>>64705
>But Pando is dying. Hungry deer and cattle have been eating its young stems, and many of the oldest trees are reaching the end of their natural lifespan.

Americans, everybody.

Blaming nature instead of themselves.

>>66351
Yeah you're right.

Looks like it's open season. Leave no buck unfucked.

>>66290
Cows that we are trying to keep away with a fence.
We could ask farmers to stop farming, but a fence has the advantage of being an actual solution in today's world.

>>66318

ayyy

Ill laugh when they try to help this million year old tree system survive and end up killing it because they stimulated more new growth than it can sustain.

How about introducing predators? It's been shown to work wonders before under similar circumstances.

66461 >>
And they are hungry. They probably destroyed their homes. Keep them healthy and well-fed in the designated area away from this.

>>64705
>47,000 trees is a single organism

This is why I get fed up with scientific news. It's always some style of bullshit.

Literally every time scientists have news it's fucking nothing.

>>66890
It's one tree, the roots are all one. It just appears to be 47000

>>66891
Cool. Still gay though.

>>66890
No. Every time the general media talk about science it's some pop science funny thing, or they totally misunderstood the actual science part and are spouting pure bullshit.
It pisses off every body interested in actual science too.
Related comic http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=1623

>>66902
Thank you for your insight

>>66891
No. It started of as One tree. New trees sprouted from it's roots and the roots decomposed in time. It's a clone basicaly. It's just re-growing from some part of it's body, and that proces repeated itself for ??? Years

>>66922
K then it's totally gay.

>>64705
>> But saving it may be as simple as putting up a good fence.
We should put up a fence, then.

>>65182
That guy was Australian.
He brought it to America.

>>65183
Why is [s4s] here? This is /news/.
Maybe if we were a real textboard, newfags would fuck off.

>>64705
Build the wall!

>>66635
Trees dont work that way

>>64705
Build the fence and their wood to do it.

>>66290
Fuck, don't you people read? They know what is causing it, overpopulation of deer and irresponsible cattle farmers.
>>66635
What?

Why are half the posters on this board mentally disabled?

>>67564
It moves slow enough that the mentally disabled can fling shit at each other at their leisure, while the rest of us watch ashamed.

>>67564
>>Why are half the posters on this board mentally disabled?

Because discussing news/politics with edgy sperglord teens and turbo-autists never ends well. They just happen to make up a large portion of this site's users.

>>66922
The trees are still connected via their roots, though.