The balance of an ecosystem hangs on the survival of a scraggly mountain tree. In northwest B.C., ecologists are facing climate change, droughts and wildfires as they work to protect whitebark pine and the species that rely on it.
In Montana, rocky alpine areas once harbored live trees that have turned into “gray ghosts,” denuded whitebark pines that died from either mountain pine beetle infestations or white-pine blister rust, a non-native fungal disease.
