Whitebark pine grows at high elevations in the Rocky and Sierra Mountains, where they have thrived for over a thousand years (Zimmer, 2014). However, the species’ future is in doubt. Between a lethal fungus called “whitebark pine rust”, the mountain pine beetle, fire suppression hampering seedlings, and climate change (Zimmer, 2014; COSEWIC, 2010) experts aren’t optimistic. Estimates are that “97 percent of the whitebark pine’s natural range will disappear from the United States by 2100” (Zimmer, 2014, para. 5), and that it may even be extinct within 100 years (Axelson, 2015). Furthermore, the tree has been declared an endangered species in Canada (Zimmer, 2014). 

          Although the threats of whitebark pine rust, the mountain pine beetle, and fire suppression are being fought in other ways, experts are debating two connected and radical solutions to the threat of climate change. The first solution is assisted gene flow. Experts say that “[a]ssisted gene flow may be a good way to bulk up a forest’s genetic diversity, sprinkling its gene pool with the ingredients that give trees a boost. As the environment shifts, some trees may suffer in the short term, but other trees will have genetic material that could help the forest weather tough times” (Rosner, 2015, p. 80). Simply put, assisted gene flow refers to moving varieties within a species range (Breining, 2014), in the hopes that, for example, the southernmost populations of whitebark pine may be better at coping with the heat, and by introducing those genes to the more northern whitebark pine populations, the tree may have a better chance at survival. 

          The second solution is called “assisted migration”. This solution is very similar to the first, except it refers to moving a species outside of its native range (Breining, 2014). Although controversial, many argue for this solution because “[p]aleoecologists have looked at the range expansion of North American trees as the glaciers retreated 10,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age [...and t]he fastest that tree species were able to invade the barren ground left behind by the ice was by about 100 to 200 yards per year. But [the] climate is shifting northward up to 4 miles per year, far faster than the ability of tree species to keep up” (Breining, Para. 10). As a test, seeds from seven different populations of whitebark pine were planted in multiple locations “up to nearly 500 miles north of whitebark pine’s current range” (Breining, Para. 18), and they have, so far, been successful. Simply put, assisted migration is “[a] re-engineering of sorts, the process involves manually planting trees farther north than their seeds would naturally fall in order to extend their ranges and, hopefully, their lifespans” (Mullard, 2015, para. 4).

          However, in the case of white bark pine, there is another hitch. In order to “...spread their seeds, whitebark pines depend on birds called Clark’s nutcrackers. If the trees are to survive in the long term, conservation biologists also will have to figure out how to establish the birds in their new range” (Zimmer, 2014, para. 24). Both the Clark’s nutcracker, and the whitebark pine are keystone species, and have a mutualistic relationship (Axelson, 2015). These species, and by extent this relationship, is “..so critical to [their] ecosystem that the landscape would dramatically change without them” (Axelson, 2015, para. 10). The relationship goes both ways, where “nutcrackers rely on whitebark pines as a crucial food source, the pines rely on nutcrackers to disperse and plant their seeds, and more than 100 other species of plants and animals benefit from that mutualism between tree and bird” (Axelson, 2015, para. 10). The two species are so interwoven into eachothers livelihood that “[n]utcrackers plant the seeds at the ideal germination depth of about an inch during caching. Each nutcracker caches up to 100,000 seeds in a  single year. But they don’t retrieve all of them—the untapped caches grow up into new whitebark pines” (Axelson, 2015, para. 21). Furthermore, “[c]ones do not open to release the seed, rather seeds must be removed by the bird and cached in the ground” (COSEWIC, 2010, p. v). Therefore, in order for assisted migration of whitebark pine to be a success, the Clark’s nutcracker will have to move with it. Encapsulated by this unique relationship, we decided to model the species distribution of the Clark’s nutcracker, in order to see if it would allow for the planting of whitebark pine beyond the northern edge of its current range. 

          Originally our intentions were to look at the entire whitebark pine and Clark’s Nutcracker range, however, the scale of the analysis proved far too large for our computing power. This problem, as well as the fact that the most important parts to look at are the northern ends of the two animal’s ranges, led us to focus in on the Candian portion of the two species ranges. Specifically our study area was British Columbia and Alberta as the whitebark pine is not present further east of the mountains present in those two provinces.