What Makes The Pines Mt.Rainier Pines So Special
Hi I’m Susan Allen, What makes the trees near Mt. Rainer so darn special? Stay tuned to Open Range to find out. Why are the Whitebark pine trees in the Northwest dying? Why aren’t Mt. Rainiers Whitebark Pines dying? Guess Pine Beetle? Well that’s the culprit in the Rocky Mountain range pine beetles aren’t much of a factor here in the Cascades. The trees are infected with blister rust and while not all trees with blister rust die, the dye off is larger incertain parts of the North Cascades like the Crater Lake region then trees growing near sunrise on Mt. Rainier. Currently researchers are working to determine what makes the Mt. Rainier pines so resistant to the fungus. One theory is that they have built up a immune system having had the disease years ago. It also might be that even if a pine tree survives the disease without all it’s branches it lacks the tree canopy that attracts the bird the tree is dependent on for reproduction, the Clark’s Nutcracker. Whitebark pine cones don’t drop seeds like other varieties thus they need the long beaks of Nutcrackers or a squirrels sharp teeth to open the cones . It baffles researchers that the Mt. Rainier pines boast a fifty percent blister rust survival rate while the trees at Crater Lake have nearly 100 percent mortality. One reason that research stations in both Idaho and Oregon are growing Mt. Rainier White Pine to be replanted in specific kill zones. Let’s hope those good genes can survive if the Pine Beetles move in as well.
