On the slope of a Utah mountain, lives the world's oldest living organism. It has lived there for thousands of years, living in harmony with the natural world around it, but today it is being slowly devoured.
The "Pando" (Latin for "I spread) is a 106-acre colony of cloned aspen trees, in the Wasatch Mountains, in a remote area about equidistant between Las Vegas and Salt Lake City, where it sits at the center of an entire ecosystem.
The Largest Living Organism
At first glance, the Pando looks like a forest of individual, white-barked trees. In this case, however, looks are deceiving as the trees are genetically identical with interconnecting roots. A single organism.
The mass of all the genetically identical trees weighs around 6,000 tons, which makes it, in terms of mass, the largest living thing on Earth.
The Pando is protected by the US National Forest Service, so while it is not in danger of being cut down it is at risk of extinction due to other factors.
"Overgrazing by deer and elk is one of the biggest worries," said paleoecologist Dr Richard Elton Walton writing in The Conversation. "Wolves and cougars once kept their numbers in check, but herds are now much larger because of the loss of these predators."
"Deer and elk also tend to congregate in Pando as the protection the woodland receives means they are not in danger of being hunted there," wrote Walton.
The deer are eating the youngest trees, and when they eat the tops off newly forming stems, they die. This means there is little new growth happening in the Pando.
The oldest stems, however, are also struggling, given they are affected by sooty bark canker, leaf spot and conk fungal disease.
The Survival Threats
The biggest threat to the Pando is climate change pressures such as reduced water supply and warmer weather happening earlier in the year, which make it harder for trees to form new leaves and lead to coverage decline.
Temperatures in summertime have been hitting record highs, and this brings the additional threat of intense wildfires. Yet, the Pando has survived for thousands of years so it has proved it is resilient.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Forest Service is working hard to protect the Pando and its ecosystem, while a group called the Friends of the Pando has dedicated itself to support and inspire preservation efforts.
The Pando survived when European settlers began inhabiting the area in the 19th century. It coped with grazing problems before, and every disease and wildfire it encounters.
"It remains the world's largest scientifically documented organism," said Walton.