Our landscape in the Rocky Mountain West is experiencing a change that is just plum scary! A couple of years ago, while heading up to Yellowstone Park from the Cody Wyoming East entrance, I was trying to figure out why there were so many dead trees. I tried to count, (don't worry, my husband was driving) and the best I could do was 1 live tree for every 5 dead ones. The weirdest thing is how brown the mountainside is, not the beautiful green I am used to.
We always try to sign up for the Park Ranger talks available throughout Yellowstone Park (I think my husband wants to become a Park Ranger some day). The Ranger's were explaining about the loss of Grizzly Bear food in the high elevations, the food is the White Bark Pine Nuts. In the late summer, squirrels and chipmunks work like crazy to create their winter food storage in heaps of pine cone middens that contain large amounts of the White Bark Pine Seeds. Grizzly's hunt around for these middens and raid them for this very nutritious food that they need before winter.
The White Bark Pine Trees are being devastated by The Mountain Pine Beetle. These beetles are having a hay day in the forest since areas like Yellowstone National Park have had trouble with drought and above average temperatures for about the last 10 years. When the trees are thirsty and dry, they loose their natural ability to push these beetles right out of their bark with large amounts of sticky sap. No water, less sap; less sap, more beetles in the trees. These beetles then reproduce and contaminate the host tree with a deadly fungus. The tree dies. No more pine nuts. Hungry squirrels, chipmunks, and Grizzly's.
I think these terrible pests will be making the news for the next 5 to 10 years as we cycle through the loss of trees, the fires that will eventually burn them up, and the rejuvination that needs to occur in the future.
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