When you go into high elevations, it's cold, it's typically fairly dry and things don't rot.

And so when whitebark pine gets killed in the high elevations there, those trees stay standing for decades, sometimes 100 years.

And we call those a ghost forest.

High up in the mountains, there's a pine tree that can live more than a thousand years.

And when the sun hits it just right, it's light gray bark shines almost white.

Whitebark pine is a super cool tree.

I get is my favorite tree species by far.

It's beautiful.

It develops these incredible gnarly forms.

Its needles cluster in bunches of five.

Its cones grow on the very top as a beacon for the bird it relies on to plant its seeds.

And even though it's one of the most remote trees in North America, its history is intertwined with humans.

We've used trails going over, high elevation for for traveling, for hunting purposes, for culture purposes.

And part of those high elevation forests is whitebark pine.

But now this ancient pine is in peril.

Mountaintops are warming, allowing pine beetle to bore in a deadly disease called blister rust is escalating and wildfire suppression has stifled whitebark's opportunities to regenerate.

So in many places, whitebark pine is almost gone.

Projections show we stand to lose all but two percent of whitebark pine in the coming decades.

If we don't do something now, given how long it takes to make a difference with it in our grandchildren's lives there won't be whitebark pine anymore and the loss of this single species would snowball not just through the mountains, but to the rivers and valleys below.

It would be almost inconceivable the value that we would lose from the high mountain landscapes.

It could have significant impacts on agriculture, on our fisheries, recreation, a lot of economic impacts you would never expect from a tree that's up on top of a mountain.

But as whitebark edges toward extinction, a few passionate people are rising to the challenge to save it.

To be doing nothing would be giving up without trying.

And that momentum is driving new discoveries.

It may just be one species of tree, but it's just as one of the first.

I'm really hoping that that's not the legacy We leave is ghost forest after ghost forest after ghost forest.

You might call it the tree with the best view.

Rooting into North America's highest elevations, the whitebark pine thrives where other trees can't survive.

It's tough.

And I think people appreciate anything that can live in a place like that and do what it does.

But even if you don't know its ecology and you go hang out with these trees, they grow on your really quick.

I think it's going to be a survivor, but we've still got to help.

Every year, the Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation invites all who love the species to a conference and the hike is the highlight.

This year, they're headed to whitebark territory on Montana's Flathead Indian Reservation, home of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.

very high hopes for this area.

Forest manager Tony Incashola was born and raised here, so he recognizes the tribes' long relationship with the land and whitebark pine .

It's part of our ecosystem, a part of our culture.

And if it's in trouble, we need to help it come back.

We understand that one key component, the ecosystem cannot be lost.

Those ecosystems may not function.

I have a science brain as well.

And I and I look at the issue.

But now for me, it's always the culture perspective.

We lose this tree culturally.

We're going to lose the history.

And you're going to lose a whole lot of teaching.

You know, if we lose the tree, look at what else we're going to lose with it.

Whitebark pine provides cover for high mountain creatures, and its cones contain nutritious seeds that feed more than 100 bird and animal species, including grizzly bears.

And in fact, several of those animal and bird species are what we call obligate to whitebark pine.

food source for the species and if whitebark food source for the species and if whitebark pine is gone, so is of the species.

But getting to the fatty morsels inside is a challenge for all but one of those species, the Clarks Nutcracker.

Its beak was built for cracking rock hard cones, and then it fills the sublingual pouch underneath its beak with 60 to 80 of these seeds.

That's quite a lot.

When you consider the size of these seeds, they're about the size of a pine nut that you'd use on your salad.

The Clark's Nutcracker flies across the landscape, sometimes, miles, to cache the seeds in clusters.

And of course, they don't need all those seeds.

But there is no way they can figure out that they've cached too much.

So they just keep on caching until all seeds are gone.

And then it comes back later, months later, and it can remember where its cached these seeds and then eats those seeds.

And that's what the lives off of.

The seeds that they either forget or the seeds that they never get to will become the whitebark pine forests of tomorrow.

Whitebark pine's range is limited to a narrow, high elevation niche, it's sprinkled across the Crown of the Continent, the Canadian Rockies, the spine of the Cascade Range and the Sierra Nevada.

But its benefits trickle far beyond that.

So these trees grow up on the tops of mountains.

And, you know, unless you're a hiker and someone who spends time in the back country, the chances are you may never have seen one or, you know, if you saw it, you never really thought much pine.

But they are really important in our lives.

Whitebark pine has a key role in the water cycle, holding onto snowpack as seasons change because the tree provides shade and shelter for the snowpack.

It's able to deliver high quality water at very low levels over the course of the summer.

Whereas if those species are gone, snow melt happens so fast that we get low quality water because the high flows and they happen over a very short season.

It really is a to me, a poster child of the very species that society should be restoring It's fundamental to the healthy functioning of these high elevation ecosystems.

And so when we see keystone species not doing well, it's it's an indication for us that the whole ecosystem itself maybe isn't as isn't as healthy as we'd want it to be.

This is an opportunity to learn with this one that's in such bad trouble and then maybe have an idea how to deal with the others before they get this bad.

Society has been slow to recognize the seriousness of whitebark pine's situation, let alone what's causing it.

They often think, well, it's a harsh ecosystem, it's cold, it's windy, it's snowy.

Of course, these trees are going to die.

But those who study the hardy species know its resilience is one of the reasons it thrives in high elevations.

In the 1980s, researchers discovered what was killing whitebark pine, and it was our fault.

The biggest factor was the fact that we had introduced as a society had introduced white pine blister rust into American ecosystems around 1910.

White pine blister rust, an exotic disease travels through airborne spores to attack five-needle pines, including whitebark.

This is especially alarming because white pine blister rust is not native to our pines, and none of them have really adapted to the disease.

So this throws a wrench in the works if you want to restore the species, because you can't just go out and plant it because it will eventually be killed by the rust.

But that's not the only enemy for whitebark pine.

Rising temperatures have allowed native mountain pine beetle to propel into new territory previously too cold for them.

So the beetles are always out there and they're just sort of present in low numbers.

They can't really do much because there's not enough to kill trees.

But if you get a warm period that supports greater survival and reproduction and you get drought, which makes trees very stressed and that allows the bettles to kill them more easily, then they blow up.

Scientists estimate we've lost between 60 and 80 percent of all whitebark pine across its range.

And some areas like Glacier National Park have seen a 90 percent loss.

There is a real sense of urgency to do something about the tree.

I think the estimates are that just due to climate change, we could lose all but two percent of the range of the tree in just the next 20 years.

And I don't know how we can work that fast.

You guys need a hand carrying anything?

Land managers across the West are going to great lengths to save whitebark pine.

In the national parks that border British Columbia Alberta, Parks Canada resource managers like Jed Cochrane recognized the effort required.

You know, whitebark itself is challenging to get to in that it's usually found way up high for us in the national parks.

There's no roads or locations that we can drive to that are close.

So lots of our sites we end up hiking sometimes will hike two or three hours, you know, often up steep hills to get to the site.

And that's just part of the climb.

Once the technicians reach the whitebark stands, they'll harness up and climb the trees to reach the cones that grow on top.

Such a nice tree.

I want to be really careful not to hurt at all.

It's July and the cones haven't matured yet, but the climbers need to get to them before the Clark's nutcrackers do.

OK, so this one has four.

So this is our version of whitebark pine cage.

It's made of window screen mesh that we just buy at the hardware store.

We buy it in big rolls.

And then the edges are taped with duct tape that helps it from fraying.

Perfect.

There is like so many on the top here.

We use colorful duct tape for us because it helps us find the trees again.

And then it's just stitched together with zap straps and then it sits on top of the branch and then the zap straps are tightened around the branch and that holds it in place.

It needs to be held in place, we find, because if it's not held in place really tightly, the Clarks will go in there and they'll pull it off or squirrels will or even bears will come up there and pull the cages off.

So it has to be snug right on the branch There.

That's good.

But if someone ever invented a cage that you could put on with one hand and tighten with one hand, it would save us because we're often up in the tree.

You know, we're harnessed in.

We're leaning out.

If you could just drop it on with one hand and tighten with one hand, that would be, you know, it would be an amazing invention, but there'd be a handful of whitebark pine scientists that would pay for it.

And that's about it.

So but they don't choose just any tree to climb because white pine blister rust has already attacked most of them.

Instead, they look for trees that have managed to escape infection.

What we think or hope is that there are trees out there that have a certain level of kind of natural genetic resistance to the rust.

Any cankers, which would be the blister rust.

And so the trick to finding those resistant trees is to go into stands where there's lots of infection and mortality from rust.

And then we look for the healthy ones.

There's no swelling, roughened bark or anything.

Some of the earliest signs of white pine blister rust are red needles known as flagging.

Eventually, blisters form on the bark.

And once that happens, the tree is on its way to dying.

There are some real active rust cankers happening on the stem of this tree.

So, you know, this tree is not long for this world.

Once it gets it on the stem, it pretty quickly will impact that cambium and girdle the tree.

And if the rust doesn't do it, then often what will happen is the other animals, like squirrels, will come along.

And gnaw on that.

It's kind of rich in carbohydrates.

And so they'll gnaw on that and then that'll contribute to the death of the tree.

On this day, a helicopter saves the crew hours of hiking time to a remote site where white pine blister rust is wiping out white bark.

That makes it a promising place to look for resistant trees.

We know that we're probably in a site where where the trees have been exposed to rust.

And so many that are healthy, we're hoping are healthy because they are showing signs of resistance as opposed to being healthy, because they haven't been exposed to the rust.

They split up into two teams and look for healthy trees and eventually land on four.

They choose trees for their cones, not necessarily for their ease of climbing.

But persistence pays off.

And together they net about 100 cones across four pines.

A productive day in their mountain top office.

In a couple months, they'll return to this site and collect the mature cones from the cages.

Then they'll send the seeds to a nearby nursery where they'll take two years to sprout into seedlings technicians hope are genetically resistant to the rust.

We think we don't know a whole lot about it yet, but we think it's a combination of genes.

And so some trees, a show of varying levels of resistance.

So just like you and I and someone else might get a cold.

Someone might get really sick.

Some might just get a little sick and someone I could take at all.

The trees are like that.

And so we don't want the person that gets really sick or the tree that gets really sick.

But we might take the first the tree that gets a little bit sick.

Fights off the cold and then has is able to kind of do well after that.

Scientists estimate perhaps just one in a hundred trees is resistant.

Even if the climbers correctly identify one, its seeds face their own odds.

Only half will germinate into a seedling.

And once planted on the landscape, only half will survive the first couple of years.

It usually takes whitebark 30 to 50 years to produce its first cones.

Not only does it take a lot of work, it takes time.

And then there's lots of mortality along the way.

There's a tremendous amount of effort you're covered in sap and bleeding usually by the end of the day.

So it's you know, it's a lot of work, but it's fun.

Yeah.

Hello, is there a bat?

But trees resistant to white pine blister rust may still fall victim to mountain pine beetle.

It's like a book to read.

University of Montana researcher Diana Six has spent two decades studying the beetle and its rise to destruction in Western forests.

You can even see some dead beetle parts.

This outbreak is so far outside the norm.

It's something like 10 times bigger than any we've ever seen.

More severe, greater in extent.

The beetles moved into new places.

So it's been a pretty remarkable thing to study.

But now that the population has collapsed, I find that some of the most interesting questions are things that we can answer now.

And that's because these forests still have trees left.

And I think we can learn a lot from the trees that remain.

In southwest Montana, Six watched mountain pine beetles chew through this forest in about four years.

But as she kept returning to the site, something didn't add up.

The beetles had missed some obvious targets.

The way I look at a forest like this is there are green trees and there's dead trees.

And the green trees, some of those just escaped because of their size.

They're just too small for the beetles to use.

But the big trees that are green, those are the ones that intrigued me, because when these beetle populations were really high, those beetles were getting desperate for somewhere to go.

They were running out of food.

Almost everything was dead.

But instead of going into these trees, they basically just collapsed.

Their population disappeared.

So that told me right there there was something really different, probably genetic about these trees that allowed them to be survivors.

Her study samples proved she was right.

Something in the genetics of the surviving trees makes them undetectable to mountain pine beetle.

We don't know well what kind of behaviors the beetles have around these survivors.

We don't know if they even land on them.

One thing we do know is we can't find any unsuccessful or accidental attacks.

These trees don't.

They're virtually untouched.

To us, they look like perfect beetle food.

But to the beetles, they don't look like beetle food.

If any of the whitebark trees contain resistance to both mountain pine beetle and blister rust, they're few and far between.

Yeah, that's a pretty one up there.

But it's got a big red blister rust flag on it.

That's a bummer, blister rust has moved in on many of the trees that survived pine beetle at Six's study sites.

Even though they have what it takes to get past the beetle, they're not going to make it because of the disease.

Specialists caging cones for blister rust resistance do attach pheromone packets to repel mountain pine beetle.

But most restoration methods across whitebark pine's range have prioritized producing seedlings with blister rust resistance.

But if you replant stands that have these survivors, the likelihood is whatever genes those trees possess will swamp out any of this beetle resistance that exists or really dilute it.

And so I can see where there might be conflict between groups that are trying to all save the tree, but maybe have a very different perspective on what needs to be done.

Whitebark pine's relationship with fire complicates restoration efforts.

The sun loving species gains its dominant position on high, dry slopes best after fire.

And so whitebark need fire to open the forest back up and then remove the competition from the shade tolerant species.

Burning also creates open areas that nutcrackers prefer for caching seeds.

But humans have altered natural fire patterns, allowing other species to swamp out whitebark, especially as it faces stress from blister rust beetles and climate change.

It's a really slow growing species.

And so it can't move up fast enough or north fast enough to sort of keep up to climate change.

And so we know that climate change is also impacting whitebark pine.

While land managers perform controlled burns to help whitebark reestablish on mountaintops, there's no vaccine for blister rust.

So they're relying on genetics, which remain a bit of a mystery.

We have trouble even knowing exactly where it is on our landscape, let alone knowing kind of genetically exactly what what's key for it.

If there was a handheld device, that you could just poke into the tree and it told you whether or not the tree was resistant, that would be a dream, because right now, from the time we take the cones and then grow them into seedlings, we're still looking at almost five years before we get an answer as to whether or not a tree is resistant.

We can now probably develop probes that could be used at the management level.

And so it really this is coming at the right time, just as technology is developing to the point where you can apply it in management.

It's a fresh way of looking at the forest.

Trees aren't clones.

They're incredibly diverse.

And we need to start taking advantage of the genetic differences, because that is what's going to allow them to be able to live in a different future.

Back on the Flathead Indian Reservation, the hike culminates at a sacred site at the top of a mountain and the base of an ancient whitebark pine, the tribe's named "ilawye."

Which means my great, great grandparent.

You know, among all of our knowledge here together, you know, this tree has more and more knowledge than any of us can hold in this tree has seen more than what we can see in our lives.

So coming up here and then getting to come up here with all of these scientists, it's very, very significant.

Whitebark has brought together people across agencies to work on a single strategy to save a species.

This species doesn't stop at our reservation border.

It crosses boundaries.

You know, it's a community and a neighboring efforts to restore the species.

It's not just us.

It's not just them.

We're doing what we're doing.

You're doing what you're doing.

No, it's all of us doing something to help this species.

It's a lesson that will echo across ecosystems.

I think this tree really does have some potential to move into a very different future.

But we've got to keep our other forests from turning into ghost forests as well.

The restoration will not take years.

It will not take decades, it will take centuries in order for us to restore this valuable species.

So we're in it for the long haul.

We're not going to see the results from the work we're doing ourselves.

And, you know, to be doing nothing would be we'd be giving up without trying.

We owe it to our grandkids to make sure we're doing something.

That faith in the future will keep pulling people to the tops of mountains to keep this long lived pine alive a little longer.