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High-Short Wavers produced our Berlin McCoy here with the story of a tree that in my neck of the woods in Montana is pretty big deal.

It's called White Bark Pine and it's special for a lot of reasons.

First of all, it lives high up in the mountains, it's habitat stretching way above where many other trees grow.

Our trees here, White Bark Pine on the reservation, the habitat for them runs from like 6000, well 4000 to 8000 feet elevation here.

This is Shinasha Peet.

Yap, A Shinasha Peet, I live up here in Pulse of Montana, I work for the Confederated Salish Cootney Tribes.

As a forester, Shinasha runs the White Bark Pine program, so she knows a lot about this tree.

Those are some tough, hearty elements that you have to face up there, you have the wind, you have below freezing temperatures this year,

or snowpacked in even Mt. of the third week of June.

So it makes it such a strong, strong tree.

Shinasha recalls one in particular called the Avatar Tree.

It takes at least two of us to both reach around it.

It's huge. It's just, it has these huge branches that are just like a candle.

It's kind of like a gray silver ish.

And especially when they die, they look like skeletons, it's completely white.

But the reason that this tree is so special isn't just its strength and its beauty.

White Bark Pine is what's known as a keystone species.

There's many different species that rely upon White Bark Pine, and that's not just animal species.

You know, this is all species of life that have a balance within that ecosystem up there in the high elevations of the mountains.

The entire ecosystem relies on it.

For things like food, a habitat in the high country, and shading, which prevents snow from melting too quickly,

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