Many birds and mammals, such as Clark's nutcrackers and red squirrels, eat and cache whitebark pine nuts. Red squirrels create especially large caches of whitebark pine nuts and cones. The large caches, termed middens, may be used for many years and may contain well more than 1,000 nut-bearing cones.

What eats whitebark pine in Yellowstone?

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The bears raid squirrel middens or caches of stored whitebark pine nuts in the fall, adding on the layers of fat that will get the bears through long winters, and improve the odds that grizzly mothers will have successful pregnancies.

Do bears eat whitebark pine?

The large seeds (pine nuts) of whitebark pine are commonly eaten in the spring (March-May) and fall (September-November) by grizzly and black bears in Yellowstone National Park and adjacent areas (Craighead and Craighead 1972, Blanchard 1978, Mealey 1980) and western Montana (Tisch 1961; J. ... Montana, Missoula, 1973).