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Australia Earth

Aussie Firefighters Save World's Only Groves Of Prehistoric Wollemi Pines (npr.org) 17

As wildfires tear through Australia, a specialized team of firefighters has managed to save hidden groves of the Wollemi pine -- a rare prehistoric tree that outlived the dinosaurs. The trees are so rare, they were thought to be extinct until 1994. From a report: It was a lifesaving mission as dramatic as any in the months-long battle against the wildfires that have torn through the Australian bush. But instead of a race to save humans or animals, a specialized team of Australian firefighters was bent on saving invaluable plant life: hidden groves of the Wollemi pine, a prehistoric tree species that has outlived the dinosaurs. Wollemia nobilis peaked in abundance 34 million to 65 million years ago, before a steady decline.

Today, only 200 of the trees exist in their natural environment -- all within the canyons of Wollemi National Park, just 100 miles west of Sydney. The trees are so rare that they were thought to be extinct until 1994. That's the year David Noble, an officer with the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service, rappelled into a narrow canyon and came across a grove of large trees he didn't recognize. Noble brought back a few twigs and showed them to biologists and botanists who were similarly stumped. A month later, Noble returned to the grove with scientists. It was then that they realized what they had found: "a tree outside any existing genus of the ancient Araucariaceae family of conifers," the American Scientist explains.

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Aussie Firefighters Save World's Only Groves Of Prehistoric Wollemi Pines

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  • The tree is cultivated worldwide in botanical gardens and by private citizens as well. The species wouldn't have been lost had the fire consumed them.
    • by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Friday January 17, 2020 @09:53AM (#59629366) Homepage Journal

      Sure. But these are free range trees, not the cultivated variety.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I heard they were gamier, not sure why you would want that.
    • by NagrothAgain ( 4130865 ) on Friday January 17, 2020 @10:26AM (#59629480)
      Many conifers actually thrive after a fire, and while these ones might be different there's a possibility that the assumption that they needed saving is incorrect and we may have in fact doomed them.
      • Debbie Downer.

      • That depends, letting them burn during a record-breaking heatwave could also kill everything and sterilize the soil for a time.
  • To quote George Carlin, "Let them go gracefully!"

    Their mere existence does not make them invaluable. Wherein is their value? Can't make lumber from them... not enough of them to matter for oxygen production... too small to be an ecosystem... Near as I can tell, they're an oddity, and that's all.

    Not everything here today needs to be here tomorrow.

  • There are no wildfires in Australia... we have bushfires

How often I found where I should be going only by setting out for somewhere else. -- R. Buckminster Fuller

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