Audubon Society presents online program
The Redwood Region Audubon Society will hold an online presentation Friday at 7 p.m. “Clark’s Nutcrackers and Whitebark Pine: Pivotal Players in our Western Mountains” will be presented by Taza Schaming.
Whitebark pine and Clark’s nutcrackers have a fascinating relationship: the trees provide rich, fatty seeds (with more calories per pound than chocolate), and the birds “plant” the trees’ seeds. A single bird may hide up to 98,000 seeds in a year. These food caches help the birds get through the winter, and the leftovers grow into new trees. Whitebark pine is rapidly disappearing, largely due to mountain pine beetles and invasive blister rust. This problem is more urgent than it first seems because these high-altitude pines and nutcrackers play critical roles in forest regeneration and ecosystem function. The whitebark pine provides high-energy seeds for many animal species, including grizzly bear, and they retain snow (and thus drinking water) on the upper slopes of the western mountains. The Clark’s nutcracker disperses seed for at least 10 other conifer species.
Schaming has been investigating the impact of the decline of whitebark pine on Clark’s nutcrackers, studying the stability and resilience of the Clark’s nutcracker-whitebark pine mutualism, to help ensure persistence of these species and the nutcracker’s seed dispersal function. She carries out her research in both the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and Washington’s Cascades, with the ultimate goal of determining which management actions will increase the persistence of nutcrackers throughout their range.
Schaming grew up in a log cabin in upstate New York. After finishing her bachelor’s degree at Tufts University, she moved to Wyoming for the backcountry snowboarding. She spent time traveling around the world and doing a variety of research on birds, amphibians, plants and conservation, then completed her master’s degree at Cornell University, before developing her doctorate research on nutcrackers. She finished her doctorate degree at Cornell University in 2016, and is continuing her research as a Wildlife Ecologist through Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative and a Research Associate at Central Washington University.
Visit rras.org to obtain the Zoom presentation link.