Some have wanted to label the pika, a charming little mountain creature, as the first species likely to be driven to extinction by climate change, but a typically excellent story by Elizabeth Shogren of National Public Radio lays out a much more horrifying possibility: the whitebark pine.
SHOGREN: Do you think it's a forgone conclusion that this tree will go extinct?
Dr. [AMY] NICHOLAS, [US Fish and Wildlife Service]: Yeah, I do. Or at the very least, there might still be some trees scattered here and there and left on the landscape, but the tree is functionally, probably, going to be extinct.
SHOGREN: But instead of putting whitebarks on the endangered species list, her agency added them to a list of candidate species. Nicholas says the federal Fish and Wildlife Service doesn't have the money or resources to protect the trees. Experts say what's so tragic about the tree's fate is they literally created the habitat in the high mountains, and they provide lots of services to nature and people.
They grow at high altitudes where no other trees can survive. Their nutritious seeds feed grizzly bears and lots of other animals. And shade from their broad canopies retains the snow in the mountains longer, keeping streams running fuller and cooler in the summer.
Dr. NICHOLAS: So that impacts everything. That impacts us. It impacts agriculture. It impacts fisheries.
Here's a picture of what some call the "ghost forests." This is from Yellowstone, where 82% of the whitebark pines are estimated (by Jesse Logan, quoted in Shogren's story) to be unhealthy, dying, or dead.
ELIZABETH SHOGREN: Scientist Jesse Logan was the first one to predict that global warming would allow a major outbreak of mountain pine beetles in whitebarks. But last week when he hiked near the northwest corner of Yellowstone, he was astounded. Where he expected to find green trees mixed in with dead ones, every mature tree was a dead gray skeleton.
Dr. JESSE LOGAN (Scientist): You'd think I get used to it, but it's always a shock when you go into these beautiful, vibrant forests that are no more.
Kit Stolz 