Pando, the Most Massive Organism on Earth, Is Shrinking
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Foraging cattle in Western USA are one of the two primary threats to the ecosystem, the other being the "wild" horses that we're too stupid to cull. It's criminal that Western ranchers are allowed to destroy land that belongs to everyone in order to barely eke out a meager existence with the tiny herds that land can support, while only occasionally paying pitifully low "grazing fees". Meanwhile the vast majority of American beef is raised in the Central Timezone, by people who own or rent the land they use for pasture. [0]
Any fiscally responsible person would see Cliven Bundy and family in prison. They're already paying a pittance to destroy the environment of the West, and then they cry about even that?
[0] A guy I met from New Mexico a month ago was bragging that they could run 12 head per square mile. We can easily run ten times that density, and more if conditions are right.
I'd like to hear more about your take on this. This past August I had an opportunity to take a ride with a lady who had adopted and trained several of these wild horses through an adoption/auction program run by the State of Oregon. To my ears it sounded very effective - the state rounds up the horses to keep them off public grazing lands and cares for them until they can be sold off. Felt like a win-win for nature, the horses, the state, and horse owners.
That's only part of this particular issue, however. Even if five times the current numbers were sold to willing owners, feral horses would still be destroying the environment. They aren't native and they are uniquely suited to disrupting the life cycle of native plants. The American hunter is probably not ready to control this population in the way that e.g. deer and elk populations are controlled. The best solution is probably sterilization, but even that would be very difficult at this scale. That is especially the case given the level of interference that could be expected from the Humane Society, ASPCA, etc.
You're right that it is pretty good for that state. He said the rule of thumb was one head per square mile per (inch of rain per year). He was bragging about being from some blessed place where they got 12" rather than 8". But the point is that the vegetation is sparse. Even if he raised the capital to purchase land, the desert will only support so many cattle.
I'm with the amount of costs the federal government is passing to Utah for wildfire management on federal land anyhow, so that's def biasing my opinion.
1: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-...
Fungus covers a large area, but each strand is rather tiny.
https://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/TechSheets/HardwoodNA/pdf...
We need to get a leash on these ranchers who are making millions plundering our natural heritage and belching massive amounts of CO2 into the air.
Too much of OUR land and too many of OUR resources are handed to these people for them to chop it up and sell it back to us. It needs to end.
Drop the subsidies for the meat industry. Tax the real cost. Tax the carbon. Driving up the cost of meat will incentivize people to eat less of it.
while on the subject, i doubt "many" want to buy, it's much easier to rent, scam and complain.
* Pound based on 16oz sirloin precooked weight.
Perhaps having 47,000 clones with zero genetic diversity has resulted in a population that is unable to adapt, especially vs. species with more genetic diversity.
Why does this population deserve saving rather than allowing new populations to grow & flourish?
We kill groves of trees all the time and most of us never think about. It's the nature of our modern society. This mass of trees has a name though. We kill it, and present and future generations won't have another Pando to enjoy.
Personally, I don't like the part of me that says we should kill natural treasures to preserve the economic interests of ranchers, but that's just who I am. It's up to us as a society to decide what kind of creature we want to be and what we want to be driven by.
any forest would eventually die off under these conditions. it has little to do with Pando being one organism or many.
While as you say other organisms will fluorish, we must consider the change in biodiversity and not just abundance
Why?
It's not 47,000 clones, that's off by 46,999. It's one organism.