Pencil pines grow for more than a thousand years each, and only in Tasmania. As lightning fires become more common, humans must mobilise to protect them – or lose these ancients forever

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

Steve Leonard finds it hard when he goes bushwalking in Tasmania’s high country these days. “I look at a stand of pencil pine and I wonder: ‘how long will you be there?’”

The ecologist is just back from a rapid survey of the cost to ancient trees of the latest lightning-strike fires across the island’s drying landscapes. Among the losses he found near the overland track, an alpine walking trail through central Tasmania, were groves of pencil pine.

I loose the horses, the wild, red horses
I loose the horses, the mad, red horses
And terror is on the land.