As many of you know, Doug Peacock is one of the strongest advocates in the USA for the preservation and range expansion of our Grizzly Bear..............Must reading for all of us is Doug's GRIZZLY YEARS AND THE ESSENTIAL GRIZZLY....................Doug's clearly worded prose below about the threats to the Griz from one of it's key foods disappearing from the Northern Rockies---- White-Bark Pine seeds, a critical source of fat for the bears prior to going into hibernation

A Fierce Advocate for Grizzlies
Sees Warning Signs for the Bear

Doug Peacock has been tireless defender of the Yellowstone grizzly for decades, but he believes the bear may now be facing its toughest threat yet. Peacock talks about the insect infestation that is destroying a key food source for grizzlies

When he returned from Vietnam in 1968, Doug Peacock retreated to the Yellowstone backcountry to "get out of myself" and get beyond the war memories that haunted him. It was there he had his first encounter with a grizzly – a mother bear who came upon him as he sat naked in a hot springs, looked him over, and then let him be. That incident led to what was to become Peacock's life's work: documenting the grizzly on film and in books (including Grizzly Years and The Essential Grizzly) and fiercely advocating for its protection.

Now Peacock is warning against what he sees as the greatest threat yet to the grizzly's future: the loss of white-bark pine, a major food source for the bear. Warming temperatures in the Rocky Mountains have led to a proliferation of the pine beetle, an insect that destroys the trees, wiping out vast swaths of white-bark pine.In the last five years, steady warming temperatures have allowed the mountain pine beetle to move up a life zone to where the white bark pine live. The mountain pine beetle has been around a long time. Until now, it's mainly affected lodgepole pine up here, and lodgepole pine has evolved some defense to it. That same genetic material is present in white  bark pine, but it has not evolved a defense. And that's because it hadn't been invaded before [by the pine beetle], because we had winter temperatures that reached 30, 35 below for four or five days in a row up in that high country and the larvae of the pine beetle cannot winter over. But since 2002 those temperatures have warmed to the point where the pine beetle can winter over. The last studies concluded that in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, which is a much bigger area than the national park, 82 to 83 percent of the white bark pine trees were either dead or dying. And a lot have died since. So what we're talking about is probably the total loss of white bark pine in this ecosystem. We don't know if we're going to have any trees left in three or four years. And as far as the grizzly bear is concerned, that means the nut of the white bark pine cone is lost forever as a food source to grizzlies.

. We don't seem to be finding many, if any, beetle-resistant pine trees. There are methods that have been talked about that would involve painting the tree with some kind of a substance. But you're talking about a labor-intensive procedure that is not just impractical — it's impossible.  White bark pine is incredibly nutritious. With the loss of the white bark pine as a food source, the carrying capacity — which is how rich the habitat is for bears — is going to be greatly diminished. And for bears to survive, basically they're going to need a much larger area to forage in.The grizzly, along with animals like polar bear and musk ox, has the lowest reproductive rate of any land mammal. And so they're highly vulnerable — once mortality exceeds birth, a population can crash in a hurry. So I think they have to be protected. And I think that the Endangered Species Act and the recovery plan that's been designed for it was absolutely unprepared for what has happened. Nobody foresaw global warming in 1975 [when the grizzly was listed under the Endangered Species Act]. Nobody saw that it would knock out white bark pine. But now this insane insistence on delisting, technical delisting of the grizzly, it's not rational, it's not logical, and it's not based on any science. I mean, global warming is a big wild card here... And you know, I tend to watch the grizzly just because it's a metaphor for the way I think about the world. And if the bear can make it, I always assume maybe we've got a shot, too.The bear is equally important to me because it's the one animal out there that can kill and eat you about any time it chooses to, even though it seldom does. And it just stands as an instant lesson in humility. It stands in the face  of human arrogance. And that lack of humility and human arrogance is what's gotten us to where we are now — we're seeing these incredible widespread effects on the very life-support system of the Earth, collectively manifested by this thing we call global warming. But we've done it and we seem not to want to notice it. Everyone wants to kind of think it's happening somewhere else and it's not going to hit home, but it has hit home. I'm looking up at my mountains right now, and they're covered with this red blanket that's kind of dripping down off the shoulders — and that's dead white bark pine forest.