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Coming up the trail thru the silver trees.
a ghostly forest of dead whitebark pines, the result of white pine blister rust, a fungal disease. The rust is a fungal infection introduced from eastern white pine nursery stock from Europe in a shipment into Vancouver, British Columbia in 1910.
Over the past 110 years it has decimated five-needle pine species across the western U.S., including whitebark pine.
In addition to blister rust, the trees have been impacted by mountain pine beetle, high intensity wildfire and climate change; though in Glacier, rust has proven to be the primary culprit, infecting more than 70 percent of Glacier’s whitebark pine.
More education for Joe, and me actually: Whitebark pine is a keystone species that supports much of the biodiversity in western subalpine ecosystems. The seeds alone are an important food source for as many as 19 animal species, including the threatened grizzly bear. The tree also is important in snowpack retention, supporting ecosystems downstream. This tree, unlike other North American pines, has seeds that are dispersed [by] a bird, the Clark’s nutcracker, rather than by the wind.
The large seeds are produced in closed cones that the birds crack open and collect in a gular pouch. They then fly to a suitable clearing to cache the seeds for later recovery to feed themselves and nestlings. Unrecovered caches may germinate, and if they survive, provide new regeneration for whitebark pine forests. The tree does not regenerate without the bird, making it an obligate mutualist.
But the surviving trees have shown a resistance to the rust. Once their seeds are collected, they are propagated in a Forest Service nursery, then eventually shipped back to Glacier to be planted.
The first trees were planted on Grinnell Point in the Many Glacier Valley in 2000 in a small area that had been burned by a previous wildfire.
Today, Park biologists and technicians plant about 500 rust resistant seedlings annually. The survivability rate is about 59 percent over 24 sites, LaFleur noted. That’s better than the average in the west, which is 30 to 40 percent. So far they’ve planted more than 25,000 trees.
But the average hiker wouldn’t think much of the trees if they came across one. Whitebark pine grow achingly slow and trees that were planted 20 years ago today are about hip high.
a ghostly forest of dead whitebark pines, the result of white pine blister rust, a fungal disease. The rust is a fungal infection introduced from eastern white pine nursery stock from Europe in a shipment into Vancouver, British Columbia in 1910.
Over the past 110 years it has decimated five-needle pine species across the western U.S., including whitebark pine.
In addition to blister rust, the trees have been impacted by mountain pine beetle, high intensity wildfire and climate change; though in Glacier, rust has proven to be the primary culprit, infecting more than 70 percent of Glacier’s whitebark pine.
More education for Joe, and me actually: Whitebark pine is a keystone species that supports much of the biodiversity in western subalpine ecosystems. The seeds alone are an important food source for as many as 19 animal species, including the threatened grizzly bear. The tree also is important in snowpack retention, supporting ecosystems downstream. This tree, unlike other North American pines, has seeds that are dispersed [by] a bird, the Clark’s nutcracker, rather than by the wind.
The large seeds are produced in closed cones that the birds crack open and collect in a gular pouch. They then fly to a suitable clearing to cache the seeds for later recovery to feed themselves and nestlings. Unrecovered caches may germinate, and if they survive, provide new regeneration for whitebark pine forests. The tree does not regenerate without the bird, making it an obligate mutualist.
But the surviving trees have shown a resistance to the rust. Once their seeds are collected, they are propagated in a Forest Service nursery, then eventually shipped back to Glacier to be planted.
The first trees were planted on Grinnell Point in the Many Glacier Valley in 2000 in a small area that had been burned by a previous wildfire.
Today, Park biologists and technicians plant about 500 rust resistant seedlings annually. The survivability rate is about 59 percent over 24 sites, LaFleur noted. That’s better than the average in the west, which is 30 to 40 percent. So far they’ve planted more than 25,000 trees.
But the average hiker wouldn’t think much of the trees if they came across one. Whitebark pine grow achingly slow and trees that were planted 20 years ago today are about hip high.