About 100 whitebark pine tree seedlings were recently planted in Central Oregon. The tree population has been declining due to fungal disease, bark beetles and climate change.
Amelia Templeton / OPB
About 100 seedlings of the whitebark pine tree were planted in Central Oregon early last month. The goal is to help increase their population as it has declined due to fungal disease, bark beetles and climate change. Andrew Bower is a zone geneticist for Western Washington and Northern Oregon with the U.S. Forest Service. He is also the program lead for the Region 6 Whitebark Pine Restoration Program. He joins us to share what restoration efforts have looked like for this pine, which remains a candidate for the Endangered Species Act.
Note: The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: As reported recently by the Bend Bulletin, about 100 seedlings of the Whitebark Pine tree were planted on Paulina Peak in central Oregon in July. The work was part of a much larger project that’s taking place in seven western states. In a sense, it’s a kind of race to plant fungus resistant seedlings before that fungus called blister rust destroys the Whitebark Pine population. Andy Bower is a geneticist who works for the US Forest Service in western Washington and northern Oregon. He’s also the program lead for the region’s Whitebark Pine restoration program. He joins us to talk about that work. Andy Bower, before we get to the problems these trees are facing and the efforts to help them, I just want to start with the trees themselves. For people who haven’t seen an old Whitebark Pine up close, can you describe what they look like?
Andy Bower: Sure. So Whitebark Pine grow only at higher elevations in Washington and Oregon, up in the Cascade Mountains. These are the trees that you often see right at tree line and they grow in really harsh environments. They’re battered by wind and snow and cold temperatures. So they often take on very gnarled, twisted appearances, very picturesque. They kind of provide part of that high elevation mountain top aesthetic. If anyone has visited Crater Lake, there’s lots of them up there around the crater rim and at the numerous ski areas. These are some of the areas where it’s easiest to get up into that high alpine environment and the more common areas where you’ll find Whitebark Pine.
Miller: How long can these trees live?
Bower: They can live several hundred years, over 500 years. I think that some of the oldest trees that have been aged were in the Rocky Mountains. I think some of them are even over 1000 years up to 1500 years. They grow extremely slowly because they grow in such harsh environments and they have a very short growing season. But they’re extremely well adapted to that environment and they can sustain life up there for a long, long time.
Miller: On the National Park Service website, these trees are described as a “colonizing” or “pioneering” species. What does that mean?
Bower: That means that they are one of the tree species that often are some of the first to come back to start regrowing after some sort of difference, say a wildfire. And part of the reason for that is that the seeds are dispersed by birds. They’re dispersed by the Clark’s Nutcracker, which is in the same family as crows and jays. They’re a fairly large bird, kind of gregarious. Itspends time up in the high elevation, you probably have heard them squawking. They’ll collect the seeds out of the cones and then they fly off and bury the seeds in the ground and they like to bury them in these open areas, recent burns and so forth. So the seed can be transported into these open areas a lot more easily. And then they get to take advantage of the abundant sunshine and so forth. That allows them to be the first to occupy these sites.
Miller: So is it fair to say that this tree and this bird have sort of co-evolved - that the tree relies on Clark’s Nutcrackers to propagate itself?
Bower: Absolutely not just fair to say it, that’s exactly what’s happened. They have what’s described as a mutualistic relationship. They have co-evolved. The Whitebark Pine relies on the Nutcracker to disperse its seeds and the Nutcracker relies on the Whitebark Pine for its primary and preferred food source. So the Nutcrackers don’t just collect the seeds from the cones and bury them. They eat the seeds. The reason that they bury the seeds is that they will then return to those seed caches throughout the year as one of their primary food sources.
Miller: But some of the ones that haven’t been eaten, those will turn into new trees ideally?
Bower: Exactly, they’ve estimated that a single Nutcracker can disperse somewhere between 10,000 and 35,000 seeds in a given season. And yes, not all of those birds will return to [every seed] and the ones that don’t are then able to germinate and grow and grow into new forests.
Miller: So obviously the Whitebark Pine is crucial for this bird and vice versa. What other roles do Whitebark Pines play in an ecosystem?
Bower: The Whitebark Pine is considered a keystone species in these high elevation ecosystems. So what that means is it has several cascading effects throughout the system. It provides a food source for the Nutcracker, but it also provides a food source for other wildlife, squirrels and chipmunks. In areas where there are grizzly bears, it’s also a significant food source for the grizzly bears. It helps to stabilize the soil just by growing and the root systems help hold the soil in place. So it prevents erosion. The canopy of the trees help shade the snowpack in the springtime. So that then regulates the snowmelt and runoff throughout the spring so that it affects stream flows at lower elevations. So those are some of the ecological services provided and then also some of the human services. This iconic tree is part of that high elevation landscape and part of the experience of being in the high alpine or hiking into the wilderness and hiking up to that craggy ridgeline and looking at those amazing views and that tree is a part of that whole experience.
Miller: What’s happening to the populations of these trees in the Pacific Northwest?
Bower: In the Pacific Northwest and in the Rocky Mountains, which are the areas where Whitebark Pine is found, including well up into Canada and the Canadian Rockies and then the coast range, British Columbia. Whitebark pine has been declining for quite some time, almost 100 years. You mentioned the fungal disease. This was an exotic disease, Whitepine blister rust was accidentally introduced from Europe over 100 years ago. And so that has caused widespread damage and death for a lot of Whitebark Pine throughout its range. And then it has been impacted pretty significantly by bark beetle outbreaks. So these are native insects but with climate change and some of the forest management, the forest had grown into stages where the beetle populations reached sort of epidemic levels and mass attacked a lot of trees, killing a lot of trees.
It’s also been impacted by multiple decades of fire suppression that have allowed other tree species to grow up in the shade that Whitebark Pine provides. So now they’re out-competing the Whitebark Pine. And as we’re having larger and more frequent fires we’re also losing Whitebark Pine to those wildfires. So they’re facing a number of threats. Add on top of that climate change as temperatures are warming and rainfall patterns changing, it’s really struggling in a lot of places.
Miller: It seems that the restoration efforts that you’re helping to lead in part of our region are really focused on making these trees less susceptible to this particular fungus. Can you describe the selection program for creating seedlings?
Bower: We’re not actually creating seedlings. What we’re doing is harnessing a natural resistance to this exotic disease. So the tree didn’t co-evolve with this disease, but there are a low percentage of trees that do have some resistance. And so the Forest Service over in Oregon, Washington, over the last about 15 years, has been going out into the woods in areas where the disease is present and looking for those rare individuals that are still healthy. And then we will collect seed from those trees. We grow the seedlings for a couple of years. We expose them to the spores of the rust fungus and track those ceilings over five or six years. And if the majority of those seedlings survived, then we know that that parent that the seed came from have some resistance.
And so then we can return to those trees and collect more cones and and get the seed from those and use that seed that we know has some resistance to disease to grow seedlings that would then be re planted back in the forest. Basically what we’re trying to do is both restore the forest, get new trees growing, but also increase the percentage of trees with resistance. So over time as these trees grow and become mature and start producing seed on their own, their offspring will then have resistance. And over time the overall level of resistance should increase.
Miller: What’s the likely timeline for that? I mean, how long before these seedlings that are being planted by the thousands are mature enough to make their own pine cones and to have these Clark’s Nutcrackers find them?
Bower: Yeah, that’s a great question. You know, as I mentioned, Whitebark Pine is a very slow growing species. And the conventional wisdom is that these trees really don’t start reliably reproducing until they’re maybe 50 to 70 years old. The odd tree may produce some cones earlier than that. But to be reproducing in large enough numbers to really make a difference, you’re looking at several decades.
Miller: So I’m curious how you think about time, given that we’re talking 50 to 70 years before these are going to maybe be sustaining themselves? But also no one who can hear our voices now nor even their great, great grandkids are going to be around before these trees are the big old gnarled ones, the 400 year-old ones. How do you think about time? We’ve got 40 seconds left for your answer?
Bower: Well, as someone working in forestry, I definitely think on much longer timescales than the average person. With other species, you may only see one or two generations in a lifetime. And with Whitebark Pine, that’s just part of the territory. Acknowledging that I’ll never see these trees reach maturity in my lifetime. But you know, I know that we’re doing our part to help perpetuate the species on the landscape.
Miller: Andy Bower, thanks very much for joining us. Tomorrow on the show Oregon is facing a housing shortfall of something like 100,000 affordable units. But a Eugene based nonprofit says that need won’t be met by the private market. So they’re taking matters into their own hands. They’re going to build manufactured homes themselves. We’ll talk to the non-profit’s executive director. Think Out Loud is supported by Steve and Jan Oliver, The Rosy Tucker Charitable Trust, Ray and Marilyn Johnson and The Susan Hammer Fund of the Oregon Community Foundation.
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