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.
Director: Grant Slater
Producers: Grant Slater, Mae Ryan
videoEcology and environmental sciences
Join endangered whooping cranes on their perilous migratory path over North America
6 minutes
videoEnvironmental history
In Kazakhstan, ‘atomic lakes’ still scar the landscape decades after Soviet nuclear tests
13 minutes
videoNature and landscape
‘A culture is no better than its woods’ – what our trees reveal about us, by W H Auden
5 minutes
videoOceans and water
A stunning visualisation explores the intricate circulatory system of our oceans
5 minutes
videoMeaning and the good life
Why Orwell urged his readers to celebrate the spring, cynics be damned
11 minutes
videoEarth science and climate
Images carved into film form a haunting elegy for a disappearing slice of Earth
3 minutes
videoEngineering
Can monumental ‘ice stupas’ help remote Himalayan villages survive?
15 minutes
videoAnimals and humans
Join seabirds as they migrate, encountering human communities along the way
13 minutes
videoFairness and equality
There’s a dirty side to clean energy in the metal-rich mountains of South Africa
10 minutes