00:00To save America, we have to throw gophers at volcanoes.
00:05Yeah, that's right, you're on that part of the internet now.
00:08The gopher throwing part.
00:10Here's what happened.
00:11Way, way back in the 1980s, Washington's Mount St. Helens erupted and left massive ecological devastation in its wake.
00:18We're talking once fertile land now covered in pumice slabs.
00:21Nobody thought that anything could grow from it, but a team of scientists got an idea.
00:26See, they were thinking, take some gophers because by digging up the beneficial bacteria and fungi,
00:32gophers might be able to help regenerate lost plant and animal life on the mountain.
00:36Forty years later, it turns out they're right.
00:39Even though those gophers were only there for one day in 1983,
00:4240 years later, trees are growing where they thought nothing could grow.
00:48That means that these gophers back in 1983 are not mere rodents.
00:53They're tiny American heroes.
00:57Picture some patriotic music playing under that.
01:00Yeah.
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