The Great Basin bristlecone pine may hold key to bark beetle management.

Between 2015 to 2017, California forests experienced historically high levels of tree mortality from the combined effects of drought and bark beetles, and today large swaths of brown, dead pine trees in the Sierra are a common sight, especially in the southern Sierra Nevada. Aerial surveys conducted by the U.S. Forest Service estimate that some 129 million trees have died in California since 2010.