Lifeline dangled for Y’stone whitebark pine

Jacksonhole News & Guide

Seedlings that are rust-resistant are source of hope for struggling conifer.

University of Colorado-Denver professor Diana Tomback, a former longtime director of the Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation, has been engaged in creating a U.S. Forest Service-led national restoration plan that crosses jurisdictions and identifies strategies to help whitebark perpetuate within “core” habitat areas currently being mapped.

“It’s probably the most ambitious restoration plan ever attempted for a forest species,” Tomback said. “We’re addressing 20 to 30% of its range.”

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A Bold Plan to Save the Last Whitebark Pines

WIRED

The high-altitude tree is vital to its ecosystem, but it’s being decimated by a fungus. Its admirers are fusing old and new methods to bring it back.

In recent years, they have been felled mainly by a fatal fungus introduced to North America more than a century ago by pines imported from Europe. "White pine blister rust is the existential threat," says Diana Tomback, a professor of integrative biology at the University of Colorado, Denver, and a founder of the Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation who has studied the trees for four decades. "It is spread by wind and it cannot be contained. The foundation of restoration is finding these resistant individuals." 

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