A portent of climates to come – on the telling rings of the bristlecone pine

Adapted from ‘The Vanishing Groves’, an essay that originally appeared in Aeon, this film tells the story of the world’s oldest trees, bristlecone pines. Perched atop California’s White Mountains, the bristlecones have learned to thrive in a cold, dry environment that most organisms cannot abide. Some have even proved hardy enough to live for thousands of years, but now the old trees face a new threat to their existence: climate change. As the earth warms, the bristlecones are seeing their habitat shrink and their predators emboldened. In a few hundred years, there might not be many of them left.