Brian Buma and Craig Welch on National Geographic Podcast, "The Tree at the End of the World"

Published: July 14, 2020

Trees on Cape Horn photo      Buma and Welch on Cape Horn photo

                                            Dr. Brian Buma and Craig Welch photo

In January of 2019, Dr. Brian Buma, Ecologist and Assistant Professor with CU Denver Department of Integrative Biology, gathered a team he described as, “…a really solid team of Chilean scientists. There was botanists. We had an archaeologist. We had some camp managers extraordinaire, bird ecologists—we basically had a lot of people with a lot of experience doing research in remote areas”.  Craig Welch, Writer for National Geographic, joined Dr. Buma and the team to take an excursion to Cape Horn; hoping to finding the world’s southernmost tree. 

You can hear the “Overheard at National Geographic” podcast, “The Tree at the End of the World”, with commentary by Dr. Buma and Craig Welch reliving their incredible journey and discovery of the tree they were looking to find. You’ll also hear how Dr. Flavia Morello and members of the Chilean scientific team found the world’s southernmost evidence of human presence (pre-industrial), the southernmost archaeological site ever found.  The site included a couple of spear points, a fire pit, and several bones from a sea mammal harvest!                                                                                         

You can read the article,"Journey to the World's Southernmost Tree", written by Craig Welch on the National Geographic website.