The 24-Hour Gopher Experiment That Brought Life Back to Mount St. Helens

By Margherita Bassi | Gizmodo |

GIZMODO - In the wake of the most disastrous volcanic eruption in the history of the United States, scientists enlisted the help of an unlikely ally to regenerate life on Mount St. Helens’ barren slopes: gophers. Over four decades later, they were shocked to see that the burrowing rodents’ positive impact remains visible to this very day.

On May 18, 1980, Washington’s Mount St. Helens covered 22,000 square miles with 540 million tons of ash. A few years later, scientists unleashed gophers onto part of the lifeless mountainside for 24 hours, hypothesizing that the animals’ digging habits might dredge up beneficial microorganisms and give the ecosystem a regenerative boost—and they were right. Now, researchers following in their footsteps 44 years later are highlighting just how enduring innovative ecosystem-rescuing methods can be.

“They’re often considered pests, but we thought they would take old soil, move it to the surface, and that would be where recovery would occur,” Michael Allen, a microbiologist at UC Riverside who partook in the study, said in a University of California Riverside (UCR) statement.

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