“Someone once accused me of working with whitebark pine because I just want to work in pretty places,” Eve Bernhard says with an endearing, yet wry, chuckle as she stands on a mountain slope looking out over Mount Rainier in golden-hour light.
Photo Credit: Andrew Studer / American Forests
“There might be a small grain of truth to that, but not really,” she assures. “There’s just so many aspects of the work. I get to do research. I get to plant. I get to climb trees. I get to meet a lot of amazing people, and it does keep me in the mountains for a lot of the summer, which is a welcome thing. It’s a pretty incredible position.”
As a restoration ecologist working in partnership with American Forests and the National Park Service, Bernhard spends her field seasons amid stunning high-elevation backdrops. She works across some of America’s most iconic landscapes in western Washington, from Mount Rainier to Olympic and North Cascades National Parks, carrying out the careful, hopeful work of restoring a keystone species under threat: the whitebark pine — resilient yet increasingly at risk.
Working to save this species is a mission Bernhard doesn’t take lightly. It’s one that is deeply rooted.
“I think whitebark pine is something that’s bigger than myself,” she says. “Kind of like when you look at the night sky and you feel really overwhelmed by how tiny you are. I look at the world of whitebark pine, and it’s this vast ecosystem that in a way makes me feel that sense of awe. But I also feel like it’s something that I can make a difference in.”
Bernhard’s passion for protecting and restoring forests began long before she ever set foot in the Pacific Northwest.
A barefoot beginning
Bernhard grew up in small, rural towns in New York’s Catskill Mountains and Hudson River Valley, where forests weren’t just a backdrop, they were home.
“I was a total barefoot kid,” she jokes. “We didn’t have TV, so I was outside a lot… running around in the woods. It’s always been where I’ve felt comfortable. Forests have given me so much that I want to give back.”
That connection followed her across the country, eventually leading her to Washington State and a job in North Cascades National Park working on native plant propagation. It was there, on a monitoring trip high in the mountains, that she encountered whitebark pine for the first time.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Eve Bernhard
“It was love at first sight,” she says attributing her affection for whitebark pine to those early childhood memories. “There used to be cathedral forests of old-growth eastern white pine on the East Coast, but they were all cut down for things like ship masts and agriculture. I always fantasized about being able to see those forests again, so I think it was a pretty natural transition to then falling in love with whitebark pine.”
Whitebark pine grows where few other trees can — up to 12,000 feet in elevation, across more than 80 million acres in the western United States and Canada. It’s also critical to the overall health of these high-mountain ecosystems. It holds snowpack in place, regulates water flowing into Western rivers, shelters other plants beneath its wide canopy and produces calorie-dense seeds that sustain birds, bears and countless other species.
Photo Credit: Andrew Studer / American Forests
“It’s more than just a pretty face,” Bernhard says. “Whitebark pine serves a lot of roles in the ecosystem for just about every type of living thing that is near it and even not near it.”
And yet, this resilient tree is in trouble.
An invasive fungus called white pine blister rust, mountain pine beetle, altered fire regimes, and climate change have already killed hundreds of millions of whitebark pines across its range. Without intervention, entire ecosystems could begin to unravel.
It’s this dire need that drives Bernhard’s passion and urgency for her work.
Doing everything possible… one cone and seed at a time
On a mountainside in Mount Rainier National Park, a sense of purpose carries Bernhard through long days and steep climbs, including up into the trees themselves. Climbing into the canopy, she carefully removes protective cages she placed earlier in the season to keep cones safe from hungry wildlife, gathering seeds from trees known to show resistance to blister rust. She navigates the tree methodically and with precision.
Photo Credit: Andrew Studer / American Forests
“I really love tree climbing,” she says. “It’s so meditative and fun.”
It’s also essential. Those seeds — tens of thousands of them collected by Bernhard and many others over the course of the season — will be used to restore burned landscapes and bolster future forests across national parks through a variety of restoration techniques, including an emerging restoration method known as direct seeding.
Direct seeding provides Bernhard with an efficient, light-weight way to replant whitebark pine in logistically challenging locations — a welcome gift for Bernhard today but a true necessity for accessing her upcoming sites, some of which require double-digit round-trip hikes covering thousands of feet in elevation.
While in Rainier, she kneels in the midst of a meadow. Once cleared for a decommissioned campground, it’s now a restoration site. Using a simple PVC frame, she maps out plots and carefully presses seeds directly into the soil.
Each hole holds five seeds, and each plot is documented. Every outcome matters.
Photo Credit: Andrew Studer / American Forests
When she finds seedlings that germinated from past seasons, Bernhard lights up.
“In this cache, there were five seeds and now five germinants,” she says of a group of tender sprouts. “For a harsh high-elevation environment, that’s a really good sign.”
She pauses, smiling down at them. “Alright, little babies,” she says softly. “Time to keep growing up big and strong.”
That tenderness is not accidental.
A legacy taking root
Bernhard is open about why this work runs so deep for her.
“One of the reasons that I personally care so much about this work is that I can’t have children,” she says. “I have endometriosis, and, in my case, a hysterectomy was what I had to do to restore my quality of life. It’s made me think a lot about legacy and other ways of being a parent and of nurturing the next generation.”
For Bernhard, whitebark pine has become an important part of that legacy she can leave behind.
“I think that plays a role in why, when I am working with the seedlings or planting seeds, it really does hit me deeply . . . I kind of feel like they really are my little babies.”
Photo Credit: National Park Service / Courtesy of Eve Bernhard
As those baby trees grow, Bernhard hopes people can see them and appreciate them for all of their worth.
“A lot of people tend to be focused on things that exist on a time scale that’s more familiar,” she says. “But whitebark pine, in particular, is a very slow-growing tree that can live for more than 1,000 years. The time scale of how it lives is kind of unfathomable for us. And so, I think it can be a little hard for people to fully appreciate them as living things. But they are.”
And just like any maternal figure, Bernhard has hopes and wishes for those baby whitebark pines that she nurtures.
“I wish for whitebark pine the same thing that I wish for a lot of plants,” she continues. “People knowing the whole story of their place in the ecosystem rather than just an aesthetically pleasing thing would be great. The more people know the story of the tree and continue to tell that story and support the work in whatever way they’re able, the more likely we are to be successful in this effort.”
Most visitors hiking past whitebark pine will never know Bernhard’s name. They may never realize how much effort went into gathering a single seed or restoring a single slope.
But they will feel it.
They’ll drink clean water fed by regulated snowmelt. They’ll experience the awe of high-elevation landscapes shaped by resilient forests. They’ll stand in places that still feel wild and alive.
And somewhere on a mountainside, small green shoots will push upward, continuing to carry Bernhard’s legacy — and ours — into the future.
