FORBES - It was a bright, warm and nearly cloudless morning on 18 May 1980, when all hell broke loose throughout much of Washington State. This was when Mount St. Helens, a dormant volcano, roared to life, sending hot lava cascading down her slopes and incinerating every living thing for miles around. Thick clouds of ash obliterated the sun, darkening the skies and fell like snow for days. Living nearby as I did when this event unfolded, I clearly recall how the warm temperatures suddenly dropped as cold winds began to blow. It was like what I’d imagine it would be like to live near a raging Mount Doom in Mordor.
For years afterwards, the decapitated mountain remained barren and nearly lifeless, her trees flattened, although a few tiny plants did struggle for life in the thick ash. But even as the volcano despaired, scientists were making their plans. They were planning to test whether pocket gophers — a widespread burrowing rodent that many people persecute as pests — could help speed Mount St. Helens’ recovery.
The northern pocket gopher, Thomomys talpoides, is a smallish herbivorous rodent species with long, chocolate-brown fur that is native to the western United States and to parts of Canada. Although common, they remain mostly hidden from view as they burrow around in the rich soil beneath meadows or along streams, primarily in the mountains, although they are found in the lowlands, too. On the rare occasions when a pocket gopher does pop up into the sunlight, they rarely venture more than 0.76 m (2.5 feet) from one of the many entrances to their extensive web of burrows that encompasses hundreds of feet underground. They are fossorial mammals: living out their lives almost totally underground. There, they store food and give birth to their young.
“They’re often considered pests,” said the study’s co-author, Michael Allen, a distinguished professor in the Microbiology & Plant Pathology Dept at the University of California, Riverside. Professor Allen’s research focuses on understanding the effects of human activities on ecosystem biodiversity and functioning, and Mount St. Helens presented the perfect opportunity to test some of his collaborators’ predictions about the potential effects of gophers on helping the nearly lifeless mountain recover from her self-immolation.