Trump administration to protect whitebark pine trees due to climate change, beetles and lethal fungus infection

A dead whitebark pine tree near Jackson Hole, Wyo. (Associated Press photo by Mead Gruver)

"Climate change, voracious beetles and [a lethal fungal] disease are imperiling the long-term survival of a high-elevation pine tree that’s a key source of food for some grizzly bears and found across the West, U.S. officials said Tuesday," Matthew Brown reports for The Associated Press. The Fish and Wildlife Service will publish a proposal in the Federal Register today to protect the whitebark pine tree as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.

The whitebark pine's habitat spans more than 80 million acres across seven Western states and Canada, the largest geographic area of any other tree listed as an endangered species. But more than half of all standing whitebark pines are already dead, according to a 2018 Forest Service Study, Dino Grandoni reports for The Washington Post. 

"The decision to declare the tree endangered due to climate change is an unusual one for an administration that often dismisses that threat," Grandoni reports. And, the listing may have "implications for loggers who would have to work around the protected pine on U.S. Forest Service land. About 88 percent of the tree’s range in the United States is on land managed by the federal government."

Fish and Wildlife isn't protecting specific habitats as necessary to the tree's survival because the agency argues the fungus is the threat, not habitat decline.