I'd rather know why people disagree than see my post silently downvoted, so I'll elaborate. The idea of a "natural equilibrium" or some such is mostly a miscon

I'd rather know why people disagree than see my post silently downvoted, so I'll elaborate. The idea of a "natural equilibrium" or some such is mostly a misconception. It's a misleading way of thinking especially in the long term. Conditions change, organisms adapt to the changes, but changing one condition of many back to a previous state (e.g. by getting rid of moths) doesn't mean that organisms that have adapted to that condition will somehow "roll back" their adaptation. Instead, the new change will necessitate a new adaptation. In this case, whitebark pines have been a major source of food for yellowstone bears, but have been in decline due to mountain pine beetles. Their season begins earlier and earlier as the air temperature rises, and their generations grow larger and larger, their life spans longer and longer. This means that if you wipe out the moths, bears won't realistically go back to eating what has historically been their diet. Instead, they will have to adapt in some other way, for example by migrating up the mountains where it is colder (less beetles), start harassing humans, eat some other abundant bug etc. Bears are good at foraging, though, and will seemingly eat whatever they find, so they may just find another source of food near their habitats when the moths are gone. On how bears adapt to the lack of pine seeds (mostly by eating other stuff rather than migrating): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4063492/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4063492/ On how there are more mountain pine beetles (because of temperature increases): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22504550 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22504550