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PrintFighting for the Whitebark
The elders of an ecosystem are perishing at an alarming rate
Beetle-killed trees, including whitebark pine, line a ridgetop in the Gros Ventre area east of the Teton Range.
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In a soggy glen, ecologist Nancy Bockino and Grand Teton National Park technician Eric “Doc” Janessen use ropes to scale the uppermost branches of an ancient whitebark pine tree, one that has thus far escaped both bark beetles and a fungus called blister rust. “These cones are so big, you guys!” Bockino calls out.
Secured by ropes, Janessen leans out from the canopy, like a windsurfer in a sea of pine needles. With a hook on a stick, he grabs onto one of the vertical branches and brings it in close; then he carefully cinches a small wire-mesh cage around a pinecone. Now the cone is protected until fall, when its seeds will be harvested for a special greenhouse in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, where they’ll grow up as some of the first orphans of climate change.
This particular whitebark pine grows at about 8,500 feet above sea level near Surprise Lake in Grand Teton National Park. Living among these high-altitude conifers is routine for Bockino and Janessen. By her own estimate, Bockino spends roughly three hundred days a year at tree line, most of that time trying to save the most tenacious tree in the Rocky Mountains.
The ongoing bark beetle epidemic is the worst in recorded history. The ravenous bugs have swept across millions of acres of pine trees in the Rockies, including most of the estimated 2.5 million acres of high-elevation habitat where whitebark pines live. In some places, nearly half of the drainages containing whitebark pines show a high level of tree mortality.
As the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service considers the tree for Endangered Species Act protection, a growing coalition of researchers, land managers, and other whitebark fans have quietly waged a campaign to make sure that at least some of the trees survive. And, out of the devastation of a species, these people have learned enough about the whitebark’s biology to provide a small measure of hope.
