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A new study shows that unconventional ecological intervention strategies still deliver benefits 43 years later.
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After the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens devastated the local environment, scientists placed a few gophers on some fields in the hope that they would stir up bacteria and fungi.
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Fungi, especially one called mycorrhizal fungi, create a community of microorganisms that allow plants to better acquire and retain nutrients.
It might be shocking to learn that in the early 1980s, scientists decided to release a group of gophers at the site of a volcanic eruption. But don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it sounds.
In fact, this particular gopher-volcano encounter proved to be so positive that its effects are still being felt 43 years later, according to a report from the University of California.
It started with the eruption of Mount St. Helens in May 1980. It was the most destructive volcanic event in U.S. history, claiming 57 lives and causing staggering ecological damage. Faced with damage that will take significant time for local environments to recover, scientists are open to unorthodox ideas that could speed up the process. So they did what any reasonable person would decide to do and threw a few gophers on the issue. Seriously.
Specifically, as the UC report states, the idea was that “by excavating beneficial bacteria and fungi, gophers might be able to help restore lost plant and animal life on the mountain.” So in May 1983, three years after the devastating Mount St. Helens eruption, scientists did just that. They gathered some gophers, took them to the eruption site, and let them do gopher things.
“They’re often thought of as pests,” notes microbiologist Michael Allen of the University of California, Riverside, “but we think they take the old soil and move it to the surface, and that’s where recovery takes place.”
Before the gophers were decimated, the Mount St. Helens eruption reportedly turned the land into pumice slabs, in which only about a dozen plant species grew. But six years later, after placing gophers on two specific pumice stones for a day, “40,000 plants were thriving.” Meanwhile, the area around those plots that had not been riddled with gophers remained barren.
It’s impressive to see these changes six years later, but no one could have imagined to this day that the benefits of Gopher’s intervention would still be seen decades later. But that’s exactly what an article published in the magazine cutting edge stated earlier this month. The article notes that forty years later, the microbial communities cultivated in these plots, specifically mycorrhizal fungi, still allow plants to thrive in the area.
Emma Aronson, co-author of the paper, said of the importance of the fungi: “These trees have their own mycorrhizal fungi that absorb nutrients from fallen needles and help promote rapid regeneration of the trees.”
Of course, as University of Connecticut mycologist Mia Maltz concludes, a takeaway from the paper is that “we cannot ignore the interdependence of everything in nature, especially things we can’t see like microbes and fungi.”
And, when things look dire, just throw a few gophers at the problem and see if anything does anything. It might work!
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