Webinar | Oct 20, 12PM MST | Development of Whitebark Pine Core Areas
Jeremy Greenberg
Don’t Miss the First Installment of the 2026-2027 Webinar Series, High-Elevation Five-Needle White Pines: Science and Management!
USFS Intermountain Region's Whitebark Pine Core Restoration Areas Delineation Process and Applications
Oct 20 | 12-1 PM MST
Tova Spector & Teresa Rhoades, USFS
Register for the 2026 webinar series:
https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_epvkBffBR5-sP6dW04gvQA#/registration
Your registration will give you access to all webinars in the series—you do not need to register separately for each session.
About the Series
The High-Elevation Five-Needle White Pines Science and Management Webinar Series is hosted by the Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation. The series brings together scientists, managers, and other whitebark pine enthusiasts to share recent research, management approaches, and lessons learned.
Webinars are held on the 3rd Tuesday of each month from 12-1 PM MST from October to May
Learn more about this year's webinar series.
Did you miss last year's webinar series? You can watch the recording on the WPEF YouTube site.
About the Speakers
Tova Spector is the USFS Intermountain Region Botanist and Pollinator Coordinator. Throughout her career, she has worked with federal and state agencies on rare plant recovery, including efforts to recover listed and rare conifer species.
Teresa Rhoades is the USFS Intermountain Region GIS Program Manager. She has worked with the Forest Service for 32 years and has served in the regional office since 2010.
Tova and Teresa are part of a larger Whitebark Pine team in the Intermountain Region that worked over the course of several years to develop tools for whitebark pine conservation. The work presented today is attributed to the entire Intermountain Region Whitebark Pine Team.
About the Presentation:
In response to stressors affecting whitebark pine and the species’ 2023 listing as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, the US Forest Service Intermountain Region developed a data driven process to identify priority areas for restoration.
Building on a 2024 suitable habitat model, the Region integrated five conservation values and used a structured seven step geospatial workflow to identify the top 20–30 percent of suitable habitat with the highest potential to support resilient, genetically diverse, and self-sustaining whitebark pine populations.
The resulting dataset maps approximately 2.1 million acres of whitebark pine core restoration areas across seven National Forests in the Intermountain Region. The datasets can effectively guide planning at watershed, forest, and multi-forest scales although fine scale assessments must rely on field reconnaissance and local expertise.
