Dear HCN,
We greatly appreciated
the article by Mark Matthews, “Last chance for the whitebark pine”
(HCN,
12/4/00: Last chance for the whitebark pine), which
described the widespread decline of the once abundant
high-elevation whitebark pine ecosystem in the Northwestern United
States and Southwestern Canada. The losses result from the
combination of introduced disease (white pine blister rust) and
fire suppression. We would like to note further that replacement of
whitebark pine by more shade-tolerant conifers has a variety of
consequences, ranging from altered hydrological patterns to more
severe fire regimes to local and regional losses in biodiversity.
An interesting juxtaposition to the whitebark pine article was
Sherry Devlin’s “Grizzlies invited back to the Bitterroot.” The
reasons given in the Devlin article for selecting the Middle Fork
drainage of the Salmon River for grizzly bear reintroduction
included food resources. The historically important grizzly bear
foods in this region include whitebark pine seeds and
salmon.
Whitebark pine – which comprises a major
subalpine zone forest type in the Selway-Bitterroot and Frank
Church-River of No Return Wilderness areas – is heavily infected
with white pine blister rust.
Blister rust is
migrating farther south and east, with local intensification over
time – a pattern that we are now seeing in the Greater Yellowstone
Area. Whitebark pine treetops bear the seed cones, and they are
damaged first by the rust. In another decade, much of the whitebark
pine in this region could be heavily infected, with little to no
seed production.
The bottom line is that two
important components of critical grizzly bear habitat (whitebark
pine and the anadromous salmon whose runs have been depleted by
dams and other human-induced changes) are in poor shape in the area
planned for grizzly bear reintroduction, and we do not see anyone
addressing this issue. Given the cost of reintroduction and the
importance of keeping bears well-fed at the higher elevations and
away from people, the first step in this process should be
long-term restoration efforts in whitebark pine
communities.
Diana F.
Tomback, Denver, Colorado
Stephen F.
Arno, Florence, Montana
Tombeck and Arno are both long-term members of the Whitebark Pine Research Team, USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Decline of whitebark pine could mean hungry grizzlies.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
