Same reason for preserving any other thing in nature. It's interesting enough that some might say that the heaviest known organism is a natural treasure, just like the tallest Redwood, or the oldest Joshua Tree, or Bald Eagles, or entire national parks and forests. Even conservation done in the name of something as practical as ecological sustainability ultimately boils down to preserving a slice of nature that we collectively treasure and value.

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.

> The grove of 47,000 quivering aspen trees in Utah is being diminished by mule deer, foraging cattle and human mismanagement.

any forest would eventually die off under these conditions. it has little to do with Pando being one organism or many.

Some forests would have access to evolution via natural selection, but this forest does not. One possible result of selection would be to favor variants that had more bitter compounds in new leaves, to discourage browsing.

And yet those forests with access to natural selection are also destroyed by human agriculture.

Perhaps because as the article states, Pando is considered a keystone species, because of that, if Pando ceases to exist, it will take species dependent on it with it.

While as you say other organisms will fluorish, we must consider the change in biodiversity and not just abundance

>we must consider the change in biodiversity and not just abundance

Why?

It's one organism with 47k appendages. This is my opinion and I stand by it. There's probably way more to learn from Pando than we think, don't delete data that you don't understand.

> Perhaps having 47,000 clones

It's not 47,000 clones, that's off by 46,999. It's one organism.

Maybe cool things are worth saving?

The tree is too big to fail? That's it. I'm done with 2018.

This was the thing that made you give up on 2018? You’re tougher than I.

Couldn't you make this argument about all endangered species?

yes and I'm sure he does.

I'm just thankful those old cyanobacteria weren't environmentally conscious. None of these modern Eukaryotic species would be around if they hadn't happily 'polluted' the entire planet with oxygen.

We ban accounts that post like this, regardless of how wrong or annoying another comment is. Indeed, you've broken the site guidelines not only by being uncivil, but by feeding a troll. Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and not post like this to HN?

The idea here is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.

I enjoyed his argument.

Most endangered species are not clones, they usually have at least some genetic diversity to build on.

Not a clone. Single organism.