Whitebark pine, along with several other five-needle white pines (Pinus flexilis, Pinus longaeva, Pinus aristata, and Pinus balfouriana) occurs at the highest elevations of western tree species ( Arno and Hoff 1990, Tomback et al 2011).
Whitebark pine has the largest and northern-most distribution of all five-needle white pines (Tomback and Achuff 2010). At its northernmost latitudes in British Columbia (55 deg. N), it occurs at elevations as low as 5,500 ft (1680 meters), and ranges to elevations over 10,000 feet (3050 m) in Wyoming (42 deg. N) and up to 12,000 ft (3,658 m) in California (36 deg. N). Whitebark pine occurs primarily in upper subalpine forests and at treeline in the United States and Canada, including the northern Rocky Mountains, Great Basin, Sierra Nevada and Cascades, and northern coastal ranges (Arno and Hoff 1990; McCaughey and Schmidt 2001) (Figure 1.2). Its distribution is split into two broad sections: western and eastern. The western coastal batholith and volcanic chain sections include the Sierra Nevada and Klamath Mountains of California and Cascade Mountains of California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, and also the Olympic Mountains of Washington and coastal ranges through the Bulkley Mountains of British Columbia. The eastern Rocky Mountains sections range from the Wyoming and Wind River ranges of western Wyoming, north through the Greater Yellowstone Area, Idaho, Montana, and north to about 55º latitude in Alberta and British Columbia.
Whitebark pine also grows in the Great Basin ranges of California, in western, northern and eastern Nevada, and in the Blue and Wallowa Mountains of northeastern Oregon, northeastern Washington, and southern British Columbia (Little and Critchfield 1969; Ogilvie 1990). Updated information for the range-wide distribution of whitebark pine, using a standard scale and minimum size polygon, is available on the Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation website.
This is the current range of Limber Pine, another high elevation 5-needle pine also in trouble.
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