Feds Reject Endangered Species Protection For The American Pika

Despite declining numbers and the threat posed by climate change, the US Fish & Wildlife Service denies endangered species protection for the American Pika.

Courtesy Montana Fish and Wildlife

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will announce tomorrow (Friday) that’s it’s denying endangered species status for the America Pika, a small cousin of the rabbit that goes by the nickname, “boulder bunny.”

The decision is a huge disappointment for environmental groups. They say the pika is danger of going extinct because of global warming. If the feds had agreed, it would have been the first time global warming was the primary reason for listing an animal.

About the size of a potato, the pika likes it cold. Its preferred habitat  -boulder fields at high elevations in mountain ranges across the West, including the Oregon Cascades. In more southerly states, like California and New Mexico, it’s rarely found below 8,200 feet.

The pika is also very vulnerable to heat. 78 degrees may seem like a lovely summer day to people, but to the pika those kinds of temperatures can be deadly.

In 2007, the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned Fish and Wildlife to put the American pika on the endangered species list. The group says that as the planet warms, the pika has to move to higher and higher elevations to stay cool. But they can only go so high. Eventually, says the Center, the pika will run out of places to live.  The group says that in Southern Oregon and Nevada, more than a third of the pika population has gone extinct.

But the Fish and Wildlife Service says that pikas are more flexible than environmentalists think they are. In its decision, Fish and Wildlife says more recent evidence shows that pikas can tolerate a wider range of temperature than previously believed. Plus, the same research also shows that pika are learning to adapt to higher temperatures by hiding among boulders during the hot parts of the day. While some lower level populations may be in trouble, the service says that for most pikas, global warming isn’t much of a threat.

“This is a political decision that ignores science and the law,” says biologist Shaye Wolf with the Center for Biological Diversity. “Scientific studies clearly show that the pika is disappearing from the American West due to climate change and needs the immediate protections of the Endangered Species Act to help prevent its extinction. The Interior Department has chosen to sit on its hands instead of taking meaningful action to protect our nation’s wildlife from climate change.”

The Center points to other research showing that warmer summers are only part of the pika’s problems. Heavy snowfall insulates the pika during the winter. But if because of global warming there’s less winter snowpack, the pika could freeze to death.

“We’ve already lost almost half of the pikas that once inhabited the Great Basin, and scientists tell us that pikas will be gone from 80% of their entire range in the United States by the end of century,” says Greg Loarie, an attorney with Earthjustice. “To conclude that this species is not threatened by climate change is an impossible gamble that we can’t afford.”