Climbers about to ascend an ancient Himalayan Hemlock tree. The first life-size portrait photo ever taken in this area, of an ancient Himalayan Hemlock (Tsuga dumosa), a species of conifer native to the eastern Himalayas.
Greenpeace Beijing office and photography association "Wild China" ventured deep into the virgin forests of southwestern China, an area with the richest biodiversity in the whole country, on a two-year mission to find, record, and protect the region's iconic giant Himalayan Hemlocks. Finally, 3,200 meters up in the Zhiben Mountains, in the basins of the Min and Nu rivers, our botanists and climbers discovered a natural monument: a 1,100-year-old Himalayan Hemlock, the oldest of its kind.
It took ten months of preparation for Greenpeace China and Wild China to plan a scientific expedition that developed sustainable climbing methods and technology to find and photograph, for the first time, this ancient tree.