Whitebark Babies!

Deputy Refuge Manager Cortez Rohr (2019-2023) poses with some of the whitebark pine seeds he and technicians collected from trees at 8,700 in the mountains of SW Montana a year ago. Cortez and the Missoula, MT DNRC tree seedling nursery have partnered to propagate these seedlings until old enough to be planted on the high elevation mountain boundaries of Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge. The remaining hundreds of seedlings will be propagated and used to study blight resistance and in conservation reforestation plots throughout Montana. This partnership is an effort to create a second whitebark pine research and propagation nursery to restore this mountain keystone species. Coeur d'Alene, ID originally pioneered whitebark propagation and conservation efforts. Now Missoula, MT is joining the fight for whitebark pine conservation!
Pardon the steam on the camera lense - it was humid in the nursery!
Photo credit: Cortez Rohr/USFWS.