Pando is a clonal colony of a single male quaking aspen that has been genetically confirmed to be a massive single organism connected at the roots. (Photo: J Zapell/Wiki Commons)
First off, the description of this batch of aspens is amazing. It has a name, “Pando.” (Pando in Latin means “I spread.”) The individual trees are not separate organisms. While each tree you see is, in fact, a tree, all these trees share a common root system, making the forest a single, living organism. It lives in Utah. It spreads over 106 acres. According to this article, it’s the largest single organism in the world. How old is it? Scientists don’t know. Estimates range from 2,000 to 1 million years old.
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Sadly, this magnificent organism is dying. An influx of hungry deer and cattle, which eat Pando’s young stems, is playing a large part in its demise, but climate change-induced drought, insects and disease aren’t helping either.
But Rogers and his colleagues aren’t content to stand idly by. They are testing out a simple and unexpected but, so far, effective conservation plan, by building a border fence around a 7-hectare section of the grove.
Rogers’ plan also involved attempting to stimulate tree growth by burning vegetation, clearing juniper bushes growing among the trees, and cutting mature aspens, methods that have been shown to promote new sprouts in the past. But it was the border wall that has proven to be the single most effective way to protect Pando. After three years, the part of Pando inside the fence contained more than eight times as many stems per hectare as an unfenced area.
The reason fencing is so effective is that it keeps out grazing animals, the most damaging of which are introduced cattle.
