In the American West, a battle unfolds over bugs, climate change, and the fate of an iconic species

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http://grist.org/climate-energy/in-the-american-west-a-battle-unfolds-over-bugs-climate-change-and-the-fate-of-an-iconic-species/

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A stand of dead whitebark pine atop Packsaddle Peak in Montana, killed by an infestation of mountain pine beetles.

On a cold, overcast day last fall, Jesse Logan and Wally McFarlane hiked up Packsaddle Peak near Emigrant, Mont., not far from Yellowstone National Park. They had to climb high into the forest, at least 8,500 feet above sea level, to find the trees: tall, majestic whitebark pines, which grow slowly and can live more than a thousand years. A light snow started falling halfway up the mountain, the flakes getting heavier and wetter as they climbed. “You gotta want it to get up in here,” said McFarlane, 46, a researcher from the Department of Watershed Resources at Utah State University.

The last time McFarlane and Logan, 69, a former entomologist with the U.S. Forest Service, hiked this peak, in 2009, they found the trees’ normally bright green needles turning shades of yellow and red. Now, just four years later, all the needles had fallen to the ground, and there were few signs of life in the forest. Even covered in fresh snow, which can lend anything a beautiful luster, the dead trees gave the landscape a bleak, post-apocalyptic aspect.

All across the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem — a 28,000-square-mile area covering parts of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho — a devastating beetle infestation has been killing whitebark pines. The consequences may stretch far beyond the fate of a single species of tree, however. The whitebark pine has been called the linchpin of the high-altitude ecosystem. The trees produce cones that contain pine seeds that feed red squirrels, a bird known as the Clark’s nutcracker and, most significantly, grizzly bears — a symbol of the American West and the current focus of a high-profile conservation battle.

In December, a panel of experts from across federal government recommended taking the grizzly bear off of the endangered species list. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is expected to issue its final ruling on the status of the bears in the coming weeks. Successfully bringing the bears back from the brink of extinction would be a huge victory for the agency and for the Endangered Species Act, which celebrated its 40th anniversary in late December.