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

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.

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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.

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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. Most of that lies in the Pacific Northwest, where conservationists were able to secure protection for old trees because logging those forests would have caused the extinction of the spotted owl. 

Protecting trees was the primary goal, but there was no policy framework for saving the forests unless they harboured an endangered species

That’s starting to change. 

In 2022, the US Forest Service embarked on a project to protect old-growth forests for their own sake, which is widely seen as a step in the right direction. Sadly, the plan was withdrawn in early January because the Forest Service couldn’t complete and approve the draft before President Joe Biden left office.

Progress has included completing the first US survey of old growth, which mapped out ancient forests and mature ones that could become old growth. And it started a discussion about how to save them. 

Apart from making our world more beautiful and helping regulate the planet’s temperature, trees provide homes for a variety of wildlife that need their high canopies—which young replanted forests lack. The trunks of naturally fallen giant trees sometimes divert water to create habitats for salmon.

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At the same time, scientists are starting to recognize the value of protecting old animals. 

Among the rockfish of the Pacific, for example, there are species capable of living more than 200 years. The older they are, the larger and more fertile they get. The oldest females are responsible for most of the offspring, sometimes laying enough eggs to produce 1.5 million baby rockfish in a year. Killing these ancient fish could cause fisheries to collapse. 

“Ageing is used synonymously with the term senescence, which is basically a decline in biological function," said ecologist Keller Kopf of Charles Darwin University in Australia. He argues against this conventional thinking in a recent article in Science on the upside of old age in nature.

Some marine mammals acquire experience with age that is needed to lead groups on long-distance migrations or find food. Male orcas rarely live longer than 40 years, but females can live up to 100 years. The older females help their offspring and pod-mates hunt. Senior elephants and wolves mediate social conflicts.

North Atlantic right whales, which are nearly extinct, have a median lifespan of 22 years. However, recent work on their close cousins in the southern hemisphere shows that about 10% reach 130 years. Thus, the northern whales may have died well before their time. 

Super-agers include sea sponges that can live thousands of years. Their glassy exoskeletons hold extensive natural climate records. And their biochemistry might consist of anti-ageing compounds that could benefit us. Too often, these ancient sponges are killed by fishermen, and because they take centuries to grow, Kopf said, they are irreplaceable.

We need new policies to protect ancient life. Kopf envisions adding clauses to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and other threatened species assessments. Protecting what’s left of ancient forests and extending conservation efforts to old animals could help preserve what would be impossible to replace. ©Bloomberg