The Murder of Prometheus

On August 6^th, 1964, one of the world’s oldest living trees was tragically cut down.

The event is instructive for what it demonstrates about how Western culture and science view more-than-human life. The scandal that erupted eventually contributed to the establishment of Great Basin National Park, which, though that gives the area some protections, doesn’t make up for the irreplaceable loss. People would probably like to think that something like this couldn’t happen again—I would like to think that it couldn’t—but I’m honestly not sure that’s the case. Let’s get into it.

The tree was a Great Basin Bristlecone Pine, scientific name Pinus longaeva (though at the time it was classified as Pinus aristata, a species that was split in 1971). “Pinus” is just the Latin word for “pine” and “longaeva” fittingly means “of great age, long-lived.” “Bristlecone” refers to the spines on the female, seed-bearing pine cones, which are especially prominent when the cones are immature. The small, pollen-bearing male cones lack this characteristic.

Needles are borne in fascicles (bundles) of five. The white-ish stripes on their undersides are stomata, the tiny openings used by plants for respiration. Remember that needles are a type of leaf! Bristlecone Pines have the longest-living foliage in the world, with needles staying green for up to 45 years.

Great Basin Bristlecone Pines develop a lot of character as they age, becoming gnarled and twisted due to the harsh place where they live, high in the mountains where the wind is strong and the conditions extreme. On the oldest specimens, less than half the tree may still be alive, or even just a few branches. This is the result of the tree’s “sectored architecture” in which each root provides only for the section of tree directly above it. So when a root dies, it only affects that portion of the tree. As this happens, vertical strips of the nutrient-bearing cambium—the layer just under the bark—die and peel off over time. The outcome of all this is visually quite striking, each tree uniquely sculpted by time.

The tree that was cut down had been named “Prometheus” by local naturalists who were advocating for the area to become a national park. I want to emphasize that the tree was named Prometheus before it was cut down, not afterwards as some online articles mistakenly say. Prometheus stood in a grove on the northeast side of Wheeler Peak in the Snake Range of eastern Nevada. Here is a description of Prometheus by one the last humans to see the tree alive:

This tree, WPN-114, grew at an altitude of 10,750 ft, on the gently sloping crest of a massive lateral moraine (Fig. 2) of Pleistocene age. The site was relatively stable during the lifetime of the tree, the only appreciable change being an accumulation of avalanche-transported debris so that the present ground surface is about 2 ft above the original base of the tree.

WPN-114 had a dead crown 17 ft high, a living shoot 11 ft high, and a 252-inch circumference 18 inches above the ground. The trunk was of the massive slab type (Schulman 1958). Bark was present along a single 19- inch wide, north-facing strip. Lateral die-back had left 92%o of the circumference devoid of bark. The south-facing (uphill) side of the tree had been so deeply eroded that the pith was missing below a point 76 inches above the ground (100 inches above the original base).

These are the words of Donald Rusk Currey, the man responsible for the deadly deed, in the paper he wrote about his findings, “An Ancient Bristlecone Pine Stand in Eastern Nevada,” [first page only] which was published in the journal Ecology, vol. 46, no. 4, in July 1965.

Side note (kinda): I get that referring to the tree as WPN-114 fits in a scheme they’d developed for record-keeping, but this one had been named “Prometheus” by naturalists familiar with it, and Currey doesn’t mention that even once in his article, which is cold. Yeah yeah yeah, science is supposed to be clinical and detached so that kind of thing doesn’t belong in there blah blah blah. Okay, then STOP NAMING PLANTS AFTER PEOPLE. (No this wasn’t just a Victorian thing; it’s still happening.) I’m serious. Imposing a human’s name on a species that has been on the planet for millions of years and could very well outlast us is sentimental in the worst way and human-centric AF. It would be far more useful, as well as more clinical and detached, to name plants for characteristics of their morphology or what kind of habitat they prefer, etc. End of rant.

Another (sorta) side note: I just gotta say, it really adds insult to injury that Currey’s paper is not freely readable online. That’s the least we should get from this tragic event. As it is, you need to visit a library that subscribes to either Wiley Online (very unlikely unless it’s at a university or college) or JSTOR (more likely but hardly universal). If that’s not available, you can pay for online access to this paper (no downloading or printing) at the rate of $12 for 48 hours or $20 for an unlimited period. If you want to download or print it, that’ll cost you $49.00. It sure doesn’t help scientific literacy that so much scientific information is locked up behind paywalls like this. End of rant.

(Side note to that side note: It is on Sci-Hub, a website that Wikipedia describes as “a shadow library that provides free access to millions of research papers, regardless of copyright, by bypassing publishers’ paywalls in various ways.” Legally, I cannot link to it or recommend that you download it from there.)

Currey was a grad student studying climatology, specifically the period known as the Little Ice Age, then often considered to be a period going back 3-4,000 years, though the current definition is 1500-1850. As is well-known, tree rings are a record of the past because they generally add a new one every year, and the width or color of rings show something about the conditions of each year. For example a fatter ring might show higher precipitation. “Dendrochronology” is what the study of dating tree-rings is called.

The stated goal of Currey’s research was to test the then current hypothesis that the maximum age of Bristlecone Pines gets younger as you go west to east across their range. Up until this point, that’s what had been observed, with trees 4500+ years old in the White Mountains of California, to 3100 years in eastern Nevada and 700-800 years in the Colorado Rockies. Currey also hoped to add to the dendrochronological record.

Typically, researchers take “core samples” of trees for such purposes. A specialized tool called an increment borer is used to extract a long, thin cylinder of wood from the tree without hurting it. Rings show up as bands on such samples. [Video short.] Slabs of entire trunks also have research value but attaining them means killing the tree obviously.

Exactly happened on the fateful day might never be known, as accounts differ, and Currey died in 2004 (on my birthday, I couldn’t help but notice). The most complete version I found is “Oldest Living Tree Tells All” by Michael P. Cohen in the journal Terrain, which I highly recommend. Cohen compares different accounts and draws out a cohesive thread.

Here are the basics though, based on the dozen or so stories I read:

In the fall of 1964, near the end of his research season, Currey was seeking an old tree for a core sample. He knew the ones in this area were at least 3000 years old. He picked Prometheus because of its apparent age. He wasn’t able to extract a core sample, either because his borer broke, or it got stuck, or it wasn’t long enough, or he simply didn’t know how to use it properly (all reasons that are given) so he asked the Forest Service for permission to cut it down. The District Ranger, Donald Cox, gave permission and supplied Currey with a crew. Apparently one of the crew refused to take part, but if true, the name of this principled man is lost to history as far as I can tell.

Here’s how Currey describes cutting it down:

To facilitate compilation of a long-term tree-ring chronology for the Wheeler Peak area, one of the larger living bristlecone pines was sectioned.

“Was sectioned” means unceremoniously chain-sawed down and sliced into slabs. You don’t need to ask if an offering was made, a moment of silence held, or permission of the tree sought; you know none of it was. This was just a group of men with a chainsaw tearing into one of the oldest living creatures on earth.

After counting and recounting the rings, and adding a few years for missing ones, Currey “tentatively concluded that WPN-114 began growing about 4,900 years ago.” This made Prometheus the oldest known living tree in the world at the time of its killing, which he does not note in his paper. Currey was reportedly aghast when he realized what he had done according to people who knew him, but we don’t have his words on the matter, so we don’t really know. He did testify to Congress in favor of establishing Great Basin National Park.

So what was the science we got from this?

According to Currey, the hypothesis of decreasing maximum age for the species from west-to-east was “at least in part, no longer tenable” though “refinement of that hypothesis can come only with more extensive sampling of maximum ages.” As it turns out, though, further sampling over the following years only showed that Prometheus was a totally unique stand-out in terms of longevity, and that the expected ~3000 year maximum lifespan is standard in the area. That is, Prometheus was the exception that proved the rule.

Science gained next to nothing from this event, in other words. Certainly not anything worth killing the tree for.

“From a technical viewpoint, there was absolutely no need to cut the Wheeler Peak Tree,” said C. W. Ferguson in 1966. (It was Ferguson who cast doubt on Currey’s ability to use a borer properly.) Another tree-ring researcher was able to take cores from Currey’s slabs and so he also believed felling the tree was unnecessary. [Cohen.]

Ferguson was the premier researcher of Bristlecone Pine dendrochronology at the time, being the successor of Edmund Schulman, who had first discovered that the species could be so long-lived. Currey knew Ferguson and sought his advice in his research in Nevada, and the hypothesis he cited about maximum age was Schulman and Ferguson’s. Schulman, incidentally, was the researcher who documented the age of the Bristlecone Pine he named Methuselah at over 4600 years, making it at the time the oldest known living tree in the world. (Updated counts put it at 4,855–4,857 years old in 2026.) He authored the famous 1958 article in National Geographic that brought the amazing longevity of Bristlecone Pines to public consciousness. Unfortunately, he died shortly before it was published, at only 49. The Schulman Grove of Bristlecone Pines in the White Mountains is named in his honor.

Currey also observed in his paper: “Many of the dead bristlecone pines seem to be almost as resistant to decay as the living trees. Millennia-old specimens, now dead, show promise of extending the history of the stand to before 5,000 B.P. [before present].” Indeed that’s true and by examining such dead trees, the tree-ring record from Bristlecone Pines has been extended back a total of 9000 years so far. This is why, in 1966, Ferguson said it was unnecessary to cut down Prometheus; already the most valuable trees for extending the dendrochronology timeline were not the living ones. Ferguson’s own work was almost exclusively with dead trees, since Schulman had already documented so much with cores from living ones.

“Accident”?

In articles about Currey’s felling of the tree, the most frequently used word is “accidentally.” The usual take is “how could he have known?” Of course he didn’t mean to kill the world’s oldest living tree. However, his choice to fell a tree that he apparently believed to be the oldest in the area was not an “accident.” It’s not like he unintentionally knocked it over with his jeep or something. For what it’s worth, a district ranger, Donald Wilcox, believed that Currey “knew what he had” [Cohen]. No I don’t interpret that as he knew it was the oldest tree in the world, but that he suspected it was something special.

Currey himself had documented that other trees in the area were 3000 or more years old that summer and the previous one. Had he felled one of these, we never would have heard about it. But that still would have been obscene. Is amassing data so important that it’s okay to kill a living thing that old? I certainly don’t think so. Neither Schulman nor Ferguson ever cut down a Bristlecone Pine to age them, relying only on core samples, so Currey’s action was outside the norms of the discipline, and that too was a conscious choice.

This is the part of the story, and of science, that doesn’t get enough attention in my opinion. Yes, “accidentally” killing one of the planet’s oldest trees is a tragedy worthy of the Greek stage, yet isn’t this kind of outcome inevitable when looking at the world through such a clinical and detached lens? That life can be—must be?—sacrificed for the much vaunted “pursuit of knowledge”? The continued practice of cruel and spurious animal research is another malevolent expression of the same worldview. An uncounted number of plants are likewise mistreated and killed in greenhouses and test plots all over the world every year. Wild flora and fauna are still “collected” for probing and dissection. What does it do to the people directly engaged in this work, and how does it influence their conclusions, when they are starting from such a narrow and insensitive perspective? How does it affect the rest of us, that we allow it? Most importantly, in my mind: What of all the knowledge we would gain otherwise, if such methods were forbidden and we had to approach living things with true respect?

Never again?

Some would say, “The Bristlecone Pines are safe now.” The ones on public land are afforded some protections, yes, but the species is not listed as endangered or threatened, so it’s legal to cut one down on private land.

More to the point, legal protections can be weakened, as is happening now. The assault on environmental regulations during the second Trump administration is unprecedented. Legislation that would have allowed the sale of National Park lands was beaten back, but its sponsor, Senator Mike Lee, will try again.

Here’s a scenario that would have been unthinkable before, but who knows these days: Given all the budget-cutting happening to Forest Service and other federal agencies that oversee public land, what would happen if one of the billionaire tech bros offered to make a very substantial donation—enough to make up for cuts, plus some, for a decade—on the condition that he could have a slab from a single ancient Bristlecone Pine that is currently living? Certainly some people would advocate for letting it happen. “It’s just one tree,” they would say. “Think of everything else we could protect with that funding.” Such a “compromise” would be in line with so many compromises made by environmentalists and conservationists over the years. Never forget that David Brower and the Sierra Club sold out Glen Canyon, a place Brower had never seen, in a deal to prevent another dam. In the early ‘60s, the canyon was inundated by Lake Powell, which may not even be useful for much longer.

Environmental wins are too often temporary; mere holding actions that stave off the destruction today, but make no guarantees for tomorrow. The losses, on the other hand, like the murder of Prometheus, are permanent.