A U.S. Forest Service collaborator marks the edges of blister rust cankers for a canker-growth project, Commissary Ridge, Bridger-Teton National Forest, Wyoming, 2023. Credit: NPS / Shanahan.
The last article in the National Park Service's series Whitebark Pine Monitoring in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, current as of June 2024.
Working across boundaries
Conserving whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem covers more than 24 million acres in three states: three national parks, five national forests, Bureau of Land Management land, tribal land and private land. What began as a grassroots effort soon became a multi-agency one.
| Year | Step |
|---|---|
| 2001 | The Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee (GYCC) sets up its Whitebark Pine Subcommittee, with members from the U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Its mission: to help "ensure the long-term viability and function of whitebark pine in the Greater Yellowstone Area." |
| 2011 | After several years' work, the subcommittee publishes the Whitebark Pine Strategy for the Greater Yellowstone Area, with detailed guidelines for conserving and restoring whitebark pine across the ecosystem. |
| 2015 | The Adaptive Action Plan: Whitebark Pine in the Greater Yellowstone Area is drawn up as an action supplement based on the strategy's recommendations. |
A national restoration strategy was being written, with contributions from the Greater Yellowstone subcommittee, and was nearly final as of June 2024.
Listing under the Endangered Species Act
- 2011. After supporting data and petitions from advocacy groups — the Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation and the American Forest Foundation — the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found listing whitebark pine as threatened or endangered "warranted but precluded." That label often reflects the agency's financial limits more than how much a species needs listing.
- The following decade. Whitebark pine kept declining quickly across its historical range, from white pine blister rust (Cronartium ribicola), mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae), wildfire and climate change.
- 2019. More data and expert opinion were gathered, and the tree's plight was taken up again for a final decision.
- December 2020. The Fish and Wildlife Service proposed listing whitebark pine as threatened; public comments were accepted until February 1, 2021.
- January 17, 2023. Whitebark pine was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
The monitoring program's wider use
Besides guiding the monitoring led by the NPS Greater Yellowstone Inventory and Monitoring Network, parts of the Interagency Whitebark Pine Monitoring Protocol for the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem have been used to estimate the status and trends of other five-needle pines (McKinney and others, 2013; Perkins and others, 2016). Independent and university researchers have asked for the program's data, and the Fish and Wildlife Service used them in its whitebark pine Species Status Assessment for the listing decision.
Sources
- National Park Service, Greater Yellowstone Inventory and Monitoring Network, "Whitebark Pine Conservation in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem." https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/whitebark-pine-conservation-in-the-greater-yellowstone-ecosystem.htm
- McKinney, S. T., and others. 2013. Monitoring white pine (Pinus albicaulis, P. balfouriana, P. flexilis) community dynamics in the Pacific West Region — Klamath, Sierra Nevada, and Upper Columbia Basin Networks: narrative version 1.1. National Park Service, Fort Collins, Colorado.
- Perkins, D. L., R. E. Means, and A. C. Cochrane. 2016. Conservation and management of whitebark pine ecosystems on Bureau of Land Management lands in the western United States. Technical Reference 6711-1. Bureau of Land Management, Denver, Colorado.
- Rewritten in hubnx's own words.
In these publicationsYellowstone National ParkGrand Teton National Park
Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) · Adapted from www.nps.gov
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