Faye D. Flam: We must conserve ageing life forms for the planet’s sake

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The oldest living things matter to the world in ways nobody understood a few decades ago. A slew of scientific discoveries shows why we should protect not just 1,000-year-old trees but also 200-year-old whales, 400-year-old fish and 10,000-year-old sea sponges.

Many old plants and animals don’t just degenerate over time, but acquire size, strength, experience and traits that younger generations depend on. Some ancient organisms can benefit humans by helping us understand ageing or even providing anti-ageing or anti-cancer compounds. Ancient trees benefit us by capturing and storing carbon.

While all trees sequester carbon that would otherwise go into the atmosphere, the latest scientific account shows that older trees do most of the carbon storage, said William Keeton, a forest ecologist at the University of Vermont. Carbon sequestration helps mitigate climate change by reducing greenhouse gases. If US President Donald Trump follows through on threats to abandon efforts to curb carbon emissions, then preserving old trees will be our next best strategy in the fight.

And while people can argue endlessly about the cost and benefits of electric cars, nuclear reactors and windmills, surely most of us can agree that majestic forests of pine, maple, beech and spruce that took millennia to grow deserve protection. While there’s controversy over how to classify old-growth and ‘mature’ forests, there’s no argument that the population of old trees has been severely depleted. Some experts estimate that less than 1% remains of the original old-growth forests that blanketed the US before 1500 CE.