Yale Environment 360: Pika Populations in the Rocky Mountains

e360 digest

01 SEP 2011

AMERICAN PIKA HOLDING ON IN SOUTHERN ROCKY MOUNTAINS, STUDY SAYS

A new study has found that the American pika, a hamster-like mammal whose numbers are plummeting in some mountainous habitats of the U.S. West, is actually maintaining a stronghold in the southern Rocky Mountains. Researchers from the University of Colorado, Boulder found that pikas still occupy 65 of 69 sites that the small mammals have traditionally occupied across a range stretching from southern Wyoming to northern New Mexico. That finding stands in stark contrast to another recent study that found extinction rates of the pika had increased nearly five-fold in Nevada’s Great Basin because its mountain habitat was warming and drying. According to the new study, the climate-sensitive species may be holding on better in the southern Rockies because available habitats in that region are higher in elevation and more contiguous than habitats in the Great Basin. However, some climate models predict drier conditions in parts of the southern Rockies in the coming decades, said Liesl Erb, a doctoral student and lead author of the study, which is being published in the journal Ecology.