According to a 2009 aerial survey, in the last decade the whitebark pine forests in 16 of 22 mountain ranges of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem have experienced moderate to severe mortality due to uncharacteristically severe beetle infestations. The loss to whitebark has been significant enough to warrant a 2011 finding by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service that Pinus Albicaulis meets the criteria for a threatened or endangered species. Because …continue…
Tag Archives: projects
plant with us
This year TreeFight has been invited by Caribou-Targhee National Forest and Bridger-Teton National Forest to replant 2,500 whitebark pine on the forest lands within the permitted boundaries of Grand Targhee Mountain Resort, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, and in selected locations near the Continental Divide on Togowotee Pass. This is completely absolutely amazingly freaking cool. We get to plant seedlings of Yellowstone’s most magical trees, which have been doted over by …continue…
protect with us
TreeFight was founded in November, 2009 with the idea of recruiting volunteers to help staple verbenone pouches, which deter mountain pine beetles, to the trunks of whitebark. Following the lead of ecologists Kelly McKlosky and Nancy Bockino at Grand Teton National Park, who have been applying pheromone pouches to thousands of whitebark pine in GTNP since 2007, TreeFight gathered more than 100 volunteers in the summer of 2010 to apply …continue…
monitor with us
In an innovative collaboration between TreeFight and the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology, our 2012 treefighters will observe and gather data on clark’s nutcracker populations in numerous points in the GYE, and then Cornell researchers will repeat those observations in the same places on subsequent days. The surveys will be done in conjunction with our replanting and protection missions. The goals of this project are to: A) monitor nutcracker populations …continue…
create with us
In order to document the health of the forest and our involvement in it, and to foster even more engagement between our participants and the whitebark issue, in the summer of 2012 we are initiating TreeArt, with the assistance of Teton Art Lab, the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival, and the Jackson Hole Center for the Arts. TreeArt is free for TreeFight students aged 8 to 18, and costs $25 …continue…
2011 Summer Academy blogs about TreeFight
This summer, TreeFight and the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival collaborated to bring students from both the Jackson Hole High School and the Middle School into the whitebark forest atop Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. It was an initiative that JHWFF director Lisa Samford had dubbed ‘SummerQuest.’ After their experiences, students at the Middle School ‘Summer Academy’ (sounds better than summer school, right?) turned their thoughts into some truly amazing blog …continue…
Summerquest: Bronc Prep and Summer Academy go TreeFighting
This summer, TreeFight brought more than 100 students into the whitebark forest, where they learned about the plight of the Whitebark, protected trees with pheromone pouches, took geotagged pictures of trees (and many other things), shot video, and gained a powerful, personal sense of what climate change is doing to the most important pines in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Click ‘More’ below to check out a gallery of images shot …continue…