The Yellowstone grizzly bear, facing the duel threats of diminished food sources and increased killing by humans, has been placed back on the threatened species list. In issuing the court order, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy cited the loss of whitebark pine, which produces nuts that many of the 600 grizzlies in the greater Yellowstone region — which includes parts of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming — 
depend upon to survive. Several factors, exacerbated by climate change, have devastated the whitebark pine. For instance, mountain pine beetles, already active in the lower lodgepole pine forest, have moved up to the higher-elevation whitebarks as winters have gotten warmer over the last seven years. With fewer trees, the grizzlies wander into other areas for food sources and have increasingly been killed by humans. In 2007, the Department of Interior’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed Endangered Species Act protection for the bear after it returned from near extinction. As many as 54 grizzly bears — including 37 shot by humans — were known to have died in 2008, the highest mortality ever recorded.