In the American West,
a Fight Unfolds Over the
Fate of an Iconic Species
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S t o r y a n d P h o t o s b y K AT E S H E P PA R D
ON A COLD, overcast day last fall,
Jesse Logan and Wally Macfarlane
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 Macfarlane, 46, a researcher from the
Department of Watershed Resources at Utah State University.
The last time Macfarlane 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 highprofile conservation battle.
In December, a panel of experts
from across federal government
recommended taking the grizzly