<
https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/2024/2/2/24052025/camel-seed-mojave-desert-joshua-tree-fires>
"In the summer of 2020, the Dome Fire leaped across the Mojave National
Preserve in southeastern California, killing more than 1.3 million Joshua
trees.
Three years later in 2023, which would go on to become the hottest year on
Earth since record-keeping began, the 93,078-acre York Fire more than doubled
the acreage of the Dome Fire, scorching large forests of the eastern species of
the wild-armed yuccas. Entering these burn scars is surreal. A majority of the
trees stand like tombstones, their trunks bone white.
Such deadly fires, combined with the increasing aridity and warming wrought by
climate change, have made the fate of both the eastern and western species of
the iconic Joshua tree tenuous.
While some Joshua tree sprouts have formed naturally in the ashes of these
fires, their modern distributors, seed-caching rodents, only travel a short
distance from their burrows, making it difficult for the yuccas to migrate
across the massive burn scars and reestablish themselves. In short, Joshua
trees are disappearing faster than the sprouts can take root.
In the absence of large megafauna like giant ground sloths that some scientists
hypothesize served as seed dispersers for Joshua trees over 12,000 years ago,
human volunteers organized by the National Park Service have taken over by
planting sprouts of the beloved yuccas across the landscape.
In the years that the rehabilitation project has been underway, Park Service
volunteers and rangers have planted thousands of Joshua tree sprouts in the
scar of the Dome Fire. For some volunteer planting days in 2021 and 2023, they
received the help of a distant cousin of a possible ancient seed distributor:
the camel."
Via
Reasons to be Cheerful:
<
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/what-we-are-reading-pedestrians-paris-hungry-otters/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
