JACKSON (AP) — Foresters tracking whitebark pine trees killed by beetles will start using GPS to map the damage.

U.S. Forest Service officials say they’re using $150,000 to start a GPS survey of beetle damage in Bridger-Teton National Forest. Foresters say the forest contains some 400,000 acres of whitebark pine, but the species is declining because of beetles and the blister rust fungus.

Pine mapping begins Sunday with an aerial survey. Researchers will take photos and video, then use GPS to help map the pine population. Work should be completed by spring.

Foresters want to know where beetle damage is worst, and why some pockets of whitebark pine appear to be unaffected.

Determining the extent of damage is important because pine provides food for grizzly bears and other species and helps watersheds, said Liz Davy, timber and silviculture program manager for Bridger-Teton.

“It’s a keystone species,” she said. “It’s very important in our ecosystem.”

Pilot Bruce Gordon will fly the plane while technicians sync video and still cameras with a GPS device to develop the map. Gordon said he’s seen dramatic changes to the forest from the infestation.

“In all these years doing conservation flying, we’ve had outbreaks before, but never anything of this magnitude,” he said. “I’ve seen it every flight, and over the last year or so it’s become really pronounced.”

Natural Resources Defense Council senior wildlife advocate Louisa Willcox helped organize the project after a smaller-scale effort last year.

“We couldn’t afford to do the whole ecosystem,” she said of the previous attempt. “We missed little bits between the flight lines.”

Even if the survey reveals bad news for the forest, she said, getting accurate information will help.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats on a key Senate Committee outlined a revised and far less costly health care plan Wednesday night that includes a government-run insurance option and an annual fee on employers who do not offer coverage to their workers.

The plan carries a 10-year price tag of slightly over $600 billion, and would lead toward an estimated 97 percent of all Americans having coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office, Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and Chris Dodd said in a letter to other members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. The AP obtained a copy.

By contrast, an earlier, incomplete proposal carried a price tag of roughly $1 trillion and would have left millions uninsured, CBO analysts said in mid-June.

The letter indicated the cost and coverage improvements resulted from two changes. The first calls for a government-run health insurance option to compete with private coverage plans, an option that has drawn intense opposition from Republicans.

“We must not settle for legislation that merely gestures at reform,” the two Democrats wrote. “We must deliver on the promise of true change.”

Additionally, the revised proposal calls for a $750 annual fee on employers for each full-time worker not offered coverage through their job. The fee would be set at $375 for part-time workers. Companies with fewer than 25 employees would be exempt. The fee was forecast to generate $52 billion over 10 years, money the government would use to help provide subsidies to those who cannot afford insurance.