The whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) is often the last tree to give way to the harshly cold conditions above timberline. Most whitebark pines are now protected in designated wilderness areas and national parks, or are in areas so high in elevation that they have mostly been spared from human disturbance. But alas, whitebarks are in danger of extinction from a lethal mix of altered fire regimes, white pine blister rust, climate change, and mountain pine beetles.
After decades of dithering, the Fish and Wildlife Service has finally proposed listing the species as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). But a special rule appended to the proposed listing creates a conundrum: Does ESA protection take precedence over wilderness area protection? At issue is whether hands-on conservation activities that may be necessary to save the whitebark pine should be allowed in the wilderness areas that host it.
Range and Importance of the Whitebark Pine
From the coastal ranges of British Columbia, across the Canadian Rockies to the Wyoming Basin, down the Cascade Crest and the Sierra Nevada, whitebarks often consort with subalpine fir, mountain hemlock, lodgepole pine, and Engelmann spruce. Individual trees have been found that have lived for more than a thousand years. Ecologists call the whitebark pine a “keystone species” as it determines the ability of a large number of other species to exist in whatever biological community it occupies.
The very large (for a pine) and nutritious pea-sized seed is coveted by the Clark’s nutcracker, which plays a critical role in the dispersal of the wingless seed. At least ten species of wildlife, including bears, eat the seed, as can humans.
Figure 2. What’s left of a whitebark pine cone after a Clark’s nutcracker has gone over it. Source: US Geological Survey.
Whitebark pine occurs on ~81 million acres in western North America (Map 1), 30 percent of which are in British Columbia and Alberta, mostly on federal or provincial crown lands. In the United States, 88 percent of the whitebark homelands are federally administered (~74 percent by the Forest Service, ~10 percent by the National Park Service, and ~4 percent by the Bureau of Land Management). The remaining 12 percent of whitebark pine homelands are state, Tribal, or private lands.
Map 1. Range of the whitebark pine in western North America. Source: Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation.
Factors of Decline
The Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has identified four major factors of decline for the whitebark pine. These factors tend to reinforce each other in bad ways, acting as threat multipliers.
Altered fire regimes
Damn you, Smokey Bear.
As FWS notes, “Fire is one of the most important landscape-level disturbance processes within high-elevation whitebark pine forests . . . . Without regular disturbance, primarily from fire, these forest communities follow successional pathways that eventually lead to climax communities dominated by shade-tolerant conifers, to the exclusion of whitebark pine.”
The Forest Service suppresses fires in high=elevation forests only when it feels it has nothing else better to do, which is often. Several years ago, the agency went full-suppression on a fire in a high-elevation forest in the Mount Hood Wilderness. Why? Because it could? There were generally no serious fires that summer, so the fire-industrial complex had plenty of “resources” not being utilized.
Had there been other fires closer to town or in commercially valuable timber, the Forest Service would have let the wilderness fire go and concentrated its resources elsewhere. But when there is no fire, there is no overtime and hazard pay for Forest Service mid-level employees, and no reason for them to vacate their offices and go hang out in fire camp drinking a lot of coffee and leaning on a lot of shovels so as to rake in the bucks for the kids’ college funds.
White pine blister rust
Damn you, nursery trade.
Native to Europe and Asia, the rust fungus Cronartium ribicola was carelessly brought to Vancouver, BC, around 1910. The native white pines of Eurasia coevolved with C. ribicola and are generally resistant to it. Not so the native whitebark pine or the other five-needle pines of North America (limber pine, eastern white pine, western white pine, foxtail pine, and bristlecone pine). “White pine blister rust attacks whitebark pine seedlings, saplings, and mature trees, damaging stems and cone-bearing branches and restricting nutrient flows; it eventually girdles branches and boles (tree trunks or stems), leading to the death of branches or the entire tree,” notes FWS.
Climate change
Damn you, carbon from fossil fuel burning and forest liquidation overloading the atmosphere.
According to FWS, “In general, the pace of predicted climate change will outpace many plant species’ abilities to respond to the concomitant habitat changes. Whitebark pine is potentially particularly vulnerable to warming temperatures because it is adapted to cool, high-elevation habitats. Therefore, current and anticipated warming is expected to make its current habitat unsuitable for whitebark pine, either directly or indirectly as conditions become more favorable to whitebark pine competitors, such as subalpine fir or mountain hemlock.”
Mountain pine beetle
Forgive you, insect.
Hell, it’s just a native species always doing what it always does only more intensely because of white pine blister rust, climate change, and altered fire regimes. Mountain pine beetles (Dendroctonus ponderosae) are taking advantage of a warmer climate and moving to higher elevations to feast upon whitebark pine.
Figure 3. Whitebarks next to a parking lot at Crater Lake National Park. Source: Forest Service Dorena Lab.
Threat multipliers
Each of the four major factors of decline for whitebark pines is a problem enough, but they tend to interact in ways that make the plight of the whitebark even worse.
As the climate warms, not only do mountain pine beetles move to higher elevations that are whitebark pine forests, but also the hard freezes that naturally keep the beetles in check occur less often and perhaps never again. For whitebark pines, a generation is forty to sixty years, meaning there are not a lot of generations to attempt to evolve with a warming climate. As the climate warms, more stand-replacing fires occur, while whitebark pines are reproducing less successfully due to white pine blister rust. Unless the density of whitebarks is high enough, the stand will not attract the Clark’s nutcracker, which is the main way whitebark seed is dispersed.
As FWS notes:
It is not known whether whitebark pine is capable of migrating at a pace sufficient to move to areas that are more favorable to survival given the projected effects of climate change. It is also not known the degree to which the Clark’s nutcracker could facilitate this migration. In addition, the presence of significant white pine blister rust infection in the northern range of the whitebark pine could serve as a barrier to effective northward migration. Whitebark pine survives at high elevations already, so there is little remaining habitat in many areas for the species to migrate to higher elevations in response to warmer temperatures. Adaptation in response to a rapidly warming climate would also be unlikely, as whitebark pine is a long-lived species with a long generation time.
To complicate matters even further, the rust also affects all other native five-needle pines and finds an alternative host on Ribes species (currants and gooseberries), often found in association with whitebark pine.
Figure 4. I first came to know the Clark’s nutcracker as a “camp robber.” An opportunity for stealing human food makes them quite bold. Source: Jen Hook, Crater Lake National Park.
Decades of Dithering
In 1991, the Great Bear Foundation petitioned FWS to protect whitebarks under the Endangered Species Act. FWS said no.
In 2008, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) petitioned again. FWS, pleading poverty, said it couldn’t respond now but would get around to it.
In 2010, NRDC sued to force FWS to make a decision.
In 2011, FWS found whitebarks to be “warranted” for listing, but “precluded” by higher priorities.
In 2013, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and the WildWest Institute sued FWS over the “warranted but precluded” determination. In 2014, the US District Court ruled against the plaintiffs. In 2017, the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision of the district court.
Along the way, FWS was annually revising the listing priority and finally got around to proposing whitebarks for listing as “threatened” in late 2020.
The Proposed Special Rule Versus the Wilderness Act
Along with the proposed listing of whitebarks, FWS is also proposing a special—“4(d)”—rule. Section 4(d) of the ESA states that the “Secretary shall issue such regulations as he deems necessary and advisable to provide for the conservation” of species listed as threatened. For the whitebark pine, this special rule outlines a few prohibitions—including the import, export, or removal of whitebarks; interstate trade in whitebarks; and malicious damage to or destruction of whitebarks—and then proposes a glaring exception to these prohibitions. It specifically allows federal agencies to “conduct forest management, restoration, or research-related activities conducted or authorized by the Federal agency with jurisdiction over the land where the activities occur.”
A paranoid reading (with the reminder that being paranoid is not evidence that one is not being followed) is that the Forest Service (and the BLM) can and will do anything in whitebark pine habitat as long as they call it “management,” “restoration,” or “research.” A charitable reading trusts that the Forest Service and the BLM will actually consult with FWS to ensure that the proposed federal “actions are not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of a listed species or adversely modify its habitat.”
Because about 29 percent of the habitat of whitebarks is in protected wilderness areas, Wilderness Watch, an organization that defends existing wilderness areas from mismanagement and degradation, has the proposed ESA 4(d) rule on its radar. While Wilderness Watch is supportive of the ESA listing of whitebarks, it wants the final rule to exclude whitebark pine management, research, and restoration activities that are inconsistent with the Wilderness Act, pointing out that “FWS’s listing proposal contemplates various manipulations—such as agency-ignited fire, genetic selection and seedling planting, and the application of verbenone (a chemical used to control insects).”
Unfortunately, the Wilderness Act sometimes falls short of the wilderness ideal.
In the 1970s, the Forest Service got away with spraying DDT (brought out of retirement for just this purpose) to attack the native Douglas-fir tussock moths in the Eagle Cap Wilderness in northeastern Oregon. The absence of fire was a major reason for the increase in the moths.
In the early 1980s, the Forest Service was clear-cutting and spraying pesticides in five wilderness areas in Texas in the name of “controlling” the native southern pine beetle (SPB). The Forest Service asserted it had the legal authority under the Wilderness Act and the Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act to muck about in wilderness areas. It turns out the agency assault on SPBs was harmful to the red-cockaded woodpecker, which was an ESA-protected species, so the logging was limited in wilderness areas, not because of the Wilderness Act but rather the Endangered Species Act.
Playing God at Treeline
What is best for nature? What is best for wilderness? What is best for whitebarks?
Does nature know best in this case? A more blistering climate and blister rust argue against a hands-off approach. The life history of whitebarks suggests that they cannot migrate fast enough to gain latitude and, in any case, will soon run out of any elevation to gain.
Do we just let whitebarks take their chances (which are rather bleak) in protected wilderness and concentrate our restoration efforts elsewhere? (If the restoration worked, the ironic situation would occur where all whitebarks were outside of wilderness areas.) Do we allow wildfires to burn and introduce prescribed fire in wilderness areas? Do we allow the planting of locally adapted WPBR-resistant seedlings in wilderness areas?
A hands-off approach means the eventual extinction of the species in the United States if not elsewhere. Whitebarks and Clark’s nutcrackers are keystones to ecosystem function. We’d still have a forest at timberline, but one of subalpine fir and mountain hemlock and likely without nutcrackers.
A few conservation parallels come to mind.
When California condors were almost gone from the wild, the conservation community split between those who favored captive breeding and those who said all the bird needed was more wilderness protected. At that time, I opposed captive breeding and favored more wilderness. Today, I favor both captive breeding and more wilderness. (I wrote about this is my Public Lands Blog post “California Condor Comeback in the Pacific Northwest.”)
The barred owl, native to the continent but not to the Pacific Northwest, is outcompeting the northern spotted owl. Barred owls moved into the spotted owl range due to all the clear-cutting of old-growth Douglas-fir forests. Do I favor “control” (shot-gunning) of barred owls to give northern spotted owls a break? After intense consideration, yes.
Do I favor administering a vaccine to Tasmanian devils to prevent a sexually transmitted disease that emerged eleven thousand years ago but appears to have gotten more virulent at the same time that devil numbers have plummeted due to human activities? Maybe. It appears that captive breeding of tumor-free and tumor-resistant devils may be working without the need for a vaccine, but the odds are still not great.
Do I generally favor hands-off nature conservation? Yes.
Is hands-on nature conservation ever warranted? Sometimes we humans have screwed things up so badly that to prevent another species’ extinction, we have to step in.
More Choices to Come
It will soon be possible—if it’s not already—for scientists (perhaps better called genetic engineers) to add, delete, disrupt, or modify genes in a “gene drive” that can be introduced into a target species to cause them all to no longer reproduce. Such could be a good thing in dealing with exotic or alien species.
My loathing of the cheatgrass (Bromus techtorum) that is invading the Sagebrush Sea is so great that I haven’t ruled out the use of tactical nuclear weapons. What if a cheatgrass gene drive could genetically drive the species off the continent it invaded? Or a gene drive introduced into barred owls could humanely exterminate the invasive population by sterilization? Or a gene drive could effectively and efficiently eradicate exotic mosquitos that spread disease among humans and wildlife?
One challenge is that every species that is a problematic alien or exotic species somewhere is elsewhere a native species. We wouldn’t want that cheatgrass gene drive getting back to Europe, southwestern Asia, and northern Africa, where B. tectorum is a feature, not a bug.
Jimmy Carter, the best former president ever, has long waged war on a species of parasite spread to humans exclusively, the guinea worm, which causes vast human suffering. It’s just about eradicated from the planet, save for four spots simultaneously plagued by civil wars that affect the safety of health workers.
I’m happy that the Variola major and V. minor viruses, which cause smallpox, have been eradicated from the wild. Recently, I also happily took two shots in my arm to do my part to halt the spread of another virus. Viruses and little parasites that are acutely harmful are one thing, but where to draw the line?
What of other native species that society finds to be without redeeming social value? It is a slippery slope. The problem with real slippery slopes is that sometimes the optimum solution is to go out on the slope just a bit. Can society do so with shoes that resist slipping and with ropes that can pull us back?
Genetic engineering offers both great hopes and great perils for the conservation of nature. In the case of the threatened whitebark pine, gene drives could perhaps be used to stop the exotic white pine blister rust and the native mountain pine beetles, but do we really want to risk playing God at treeline? If we do, the godplay should be limited to targeting the introduced exotic pathogen, not the native insect.
For More Information
• Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation
• US Fish and Wildlife Service. December 2, 2020. Threatened Species Status for Pinus albicaulis (Whitebark Pine) with Section 4(d) Rule: Proposed. Federal Register, Vol. 85, No. 232.
• US Fish and Wildlife Service, Wyoming Ecological Services Field Office, Cheyenne, Wyoming. 2018. Species Status Assessment Report for the Whitebark Pine, Pinus albicaulis.