Uprooted: how climate change may kick off an artificial migration of trees

The National Park System is turning 100, and The Verge is celebrating with Wilderness Week: a look at the natural world, its freaky critters, and its future.

Whitebark pines are majestic trees with a whitish, often wind-curled trunk that grow up high in the Rocky and Sierra Mountains, in the Western US. They’re icons of Yellowstone National Park, where they provide high-calorie seeds for many animals, including grizzly bears that eat the seeds before hibernating. Some whitebark pines manage to live for a thousand years, but many of them are now dying.

The reason? Climate change. Warmer temperatures have allowed the mountain pine beetle to survive winters, exposing the trees to the voracious pest. And a vicious, lethal fungus is...