Houston Chronicle: El Nino edges plant to lip of extinction

Children burn the dry-leafed plants for the fireworks-like

crackle made as the fire

climbs up the stalks. The

development of the Andean mining industry and the

increase of tourism have all taken a toll.

"There are a lot of small factors, and each one has an

impact," said environmentalist

Humberto Sanchez de Leon,

who is based in the Huaraz area, one of the parts of

Peru

with the highest concentrations of Puyas. "In many areas,

our research shows

that each generation of plants is a little

smaller than the previous one."

Peruvian authorities say they are taking steps to protect the

Puyas, but the long life

span will make it difficult to

determine the degree of peril for up to half a century.

It is easy to understand how fragile the plant can be. A dead

Puya has as many as 12

million seeds but, according to

university research, fewer than half a dozen of them

will

grow into baby plants even under the most ideal conditions

and only a fraction of

baby plants reach adulthood.

Scientists say that the depth to which the seed is buried in

the sand, the weather in

its first years, the number of

seed-eating birds and other wildlife in the area and even

the

angle at which the seed settles into the soil are all factors

that can help or doom

a seed's chances for survival. Add the

unusually premature blooming from El Niño to

the mix and

it's easy to see how a series of seemingly minor changes

could

endanger the plant's future.

"It's such a fragile system that it would be very easy for it to be upset," said Salazar. "Maybe these plants will grow up and not bloom.
Maybe they will grow seeds incapable of developing into a healthy generation. Maybe the seeds will be sterile. Keep in mind that the
plants we see today were subject to events that passed around the turn of the last century."

Walking in a forest of Puyas isn't like walking among more familiar plants. Thriving at an altitude of between 13,000 feet and 18,000 feet,
the spires rise from an otherwise barren, lunarlike landscape. When in bloom, the plants fill the crisp air with a delicate fragrance.
Sounds echo off the rocky hills and create an eerie feeling of peaceful isolation.

"You can see some of the tourists wander off among the Puyas, and they lose track of time," said Eduardo Peralta, a Huaraz-based tour
guide. "We have to carefully count our passengers when we reload our buses. If we don't, we might leave someone behind."

	This article originally appeared in




Modern world crowds ancient life form By ERIC J. LYMAN Special to the Chronicle HUARAZ, Peru -- Isolated for millennia high in Peru's rugged Andes Mountains, the prehistoric Puya Raimondi was considered a plant that time forgot. Each cactus-like plant -- a distant cousin to the pineapple that can grow as high as 50 feet -- is believed to live for 100 years. At the end of its time, the plant's long trunk explodes with as many as 10,000 tiny flowers that change from green to white to yellow to pink over a two-week span. After the blooms fade, the plant dies. Described as a "living fossil" by naturalists, the Puya has remained unchanged genetically for hundreds of thousands of years. But now the Puya faces several threats that could hasten its demise. "The plant has lived unthreatened for so many thousands of years that it hasn't had to change," said U.S.-based botanist Ramon Salazar. "That makes it less equipped to handle the modern world." Indeed, the plant, would seem more at home in a scene from Jurassic Park than at the threshold of the 21st century. The weather phenomenon El Niño is the latest in a long line of factors pushing the Puyas the way of the dinosaurs. The unusually warm weather from El Niño caused an abnormally high bloom rate among the plants. That made the plants even more attractive than normal, but it also means that more Puyas than usual will die this year. "There aren't any estimates yet, but if El Niño forced half of the Puyas to bloom this year, then that would mean that the population will be cut in half by next year," said Italian naturalist Ittore Grugni, who is based in Lima. "That could be disastrous." Even before El Niño, the plants were being threatened. Farmers cut the plants down for their strong but nearly weightless wood, or because long-haired livestock such as sheep and alpaca get trapped in the plant's long thorns and starve to death.

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