Same reason for preserving any other thing in nature. It's interesting enough that some might say that the heaviest known organism is a natural treasure, just

Same reason for preserving any other thing in nature. It's interesting enough that some might say that the heaviest known organism is a natural treasure, just like the tallest Redwood, or the oldest Joshua Tree, or Bald Eagles, or entire national parks and forests. Even conservation done in the name of something as practical as ecological sustainability ultimately boils down to preserving a slice of nature that we collectively treasure and value. We kill groves of trees all the time and most of us never think about. It's the nature of our modern society. This mass of trees has a name though. We kill it, and present and future generations won't have another Pando to enjoy. Personally, I don't like the part of me that says we should kill natural treasures to preserve the economic interests of ranchers, but that's just who I am. It's up to us as a society to decide what kind of creature we want to be and what we want to be driven by.