Grizzly bear. photo: Wikipedia  Yale Environment 360 currently has a piece which connects two subjects that TreeHugger has covered on a number of occasions, species getting de-listed as endangered species and climate change wiping out habitat. In this case it’s the grizzly bear and pine trees dying in and around Yellowstone National Park:

Though the grizzly bear had been on the Endangered Species List since 1975, it was removed in 2007, thereby essentially allowing hunters to declare open season on the animals. And in 2008 record numbers were killed 37 were killed by humans. Add to that bears found to have died from other causes and the total rises to 54—a figure which is more likely really around 100, if you take into account the ordinary discrepancy between “known mortality” and those bears whose deaths went unnoticed. That’s the word from author Doug Peacock, a man who knows a thing or two about grizzlies. Peacock also argues that climate change, which is killing off whitebark pine trees in the Yellowstone region as invasive pine beetles quickly spread, is doing in the bears. Because pine nuts are becoming increasingly scarce, an important food source for the bears in declining. …

How Climate Change & People Are Wiping Out the Grizzly Bear in Yellowstone