![]() ![]() “I think pikas are much more resilient than we think they are,” he said from sizzling-hot Tempe, Arizona, where he’d just returned after a field stint in cooler climes. That fact is often cited, but not always with the caveat that pikas usually have a shady respite nearby.) But he doesn’t think they’re endangered. (His experiments in the 1970s – which he emphasizes would no longer be allowed by a university review board – demonstrated a pika would die if exposed to 80-degree heat. Their rate of reproduction is relatively low, and they don’t do well with high temperatures. Smith, who has studied them from Colorado to California to China, knows that pikas are a vulnerable species. “No one likes them better than I do,” he said in a phone interview Friday. He drives around with a pika finger puppet on his dashboard, and other pika memorabilia is scattered around his home. “That, despite that their numbers are declining in the Great Basin.”Īndrew Smith, professor of conservation biology at Arizona State University, has been studying pikas professionally since 1969. “(Fish and Wildlife) thought there are enough of them, and that they have the capacity to adjust to climate change,” she said. Shaye Wolf, climate science director at the Center for Biological Diversity in San Francisco, told the Herald last month that pikas are disappearing in the Great Basin (Nevada and southern Oregon) because of drought and temperature. “However,” the federal decision notice said, “we ask the public to submit to us any new information that becomes available concerning the threats to the American pika, the five subspecies or its habitat at any time.” That listing was denied in a February 2010 decision. “Just as importantly,” it says on its website, “the species’ protected status would be a strong call to action against global warming.” Fish and Wildlife Service to protect American pika habitat by listing it as threatened or endangered. OK, so what spurred the concern in the first place? The Center for Biological Diversity, based in Tucson, Arizona, in 2007 petitioned the U.S. “Global warming will present challenges for many animal species,” Seglund said in a news release last week, “but our study shows that Colorado’s pika populations, for now, are in good shape.” Parks and Wildlife will continue to monitor 30 sites statewide. The gist is that at 62 sites where pikas have been found in the past, 58 still had plenty of creatures around, and only one site of suitable habitat had no sign of even past pika occupancy. Her report uses terms such as “stochastic,” “vagility” and “philopatric.” And that’s just from one sentence. “The 2008 survey data indicated pika populations are abundant and well-distributed throughout the state,” Seglund said in the “discussion” part of her study wrapup. Follow-ups continue to show stable populations. Last week, Parks and Wildlife released results of a 2008 study indicating no cause for immediate alarm. ![]() We’ll start with Amy Seglund, a species conservation biologist with Colorado Parks and Wildlife. So let’s check with a few people who have given this issue a lot of thought. Will pikas, for instance, be forced higher and higher up the mountains until there’s no “higher” left? Weather data seem to indicate a warming trend on the planet, and there’s concern that effects of the increased heat will alter the living landscape. With good reason, biologists are keeping tabs on the American pika. If you love the pika – and how could you not – what is your best course of action? Do you study it? List it as endangered? Leave it alone? People are human (for the most part), and so it’s possible they’re allowing their biases to prevail when considering what to do about the pika. ![]() It can decide for itself when it’s time to rise and when it’s too hot to go about business.Īs is the unfortunate trend, our little furry friend is caught up in the politics of global warming. The cute little pika, according to at least one expert, needs no alarm. ![]() Others want to mute it or perhaps turn it off entirely. ![]()
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