A new study, led by federal agencies in collaboration with the University of Colorado Denver, shows that the whitebark pine tree—an iconic, high-elevation tree that stretches from California’s Sierra Nevada through the Cascades and Rockies and into Canada—could lose as much as 80 percent of its habitat to climate change in the next 25 years.

The loss could have a cascade of effects, impacting wildlife and people.

The threatened whitebark pine tree is a crucial food source for squirrels and grizzly bears. It also acts as a natural snow fence, holding snowpack in place and releasing meltwater slowly throughout the summer. That runoff supports entire watersheds, which farmers and ranchers depend on. The nearest whitebark pine to us in Colorado is in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in

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