American pika is a rabbit relative, a small animal that's about the size of a rat,
but it's not a rat at all, it's a rabbit. And it's become something of an icon for climate change.
Throughout the history of the Forest Service, the research branch has provided valuable
information to help guide the management of our national forests and grasslands.
Connie Millar's research includes the changing habitat of the American pika.
Initially, I set out to characterize the current distribution of pika. And the elevation range
that the pika can extend go from about this elevation, maybe 7500 feet to
the tops of our highest peaks, which are over 13,000.
Pikas in an online competition were voted North America's second cutest mammal.
Second only to something that you would never guess, but it was the polar bear.
The Forest Service collaborates with many scientific organizations and institutions.
Eric Beever of the U.S. Geological Survey has been providing important pika research to
the Forest Service for over 23 years.
Turns out that a lot of these higher elevation areas are on Forest Service lands.
And across the West we've been working with twenty-six different national forests.
Pika's geographic range spans about the western third of North America.
Ten of the western states, excluding Arizona, as well as the southern parts of British Columbia and Alberta.
In general they're restricted to areas that are more moist and cool.
They're typically areas that are higher in elevation.
A unique aspect of the American pika is that they live almost exclusively in talus slopes.
Talus slopes and areas of broke rock provide shelter from the sunlight and essentially shade,
as well as protection from predators.
Rabbits in general are poor thermoregulators, that is that they have a hard time dissipating heat
when temperatures are high. They mostly live inside the talus to avoid the heat of the day.
And not a lot of other species use these areas of the landscape.
Most fundamentally, pikas give a great insight into the complexity and nuance
with which climate is going to act on species.
American pika research is significant in part because there has been little change
to their environment with the exception of climate.
One of the interesting pieces about pikas is that their habitat has changed none.
The amount of habitat at this talus habitat and broken rock habitat, has not changed whatsoever in terms of
its extent or its spatial arrangement. And so we're seeing, in some cases, dramatic changes
in their distribution without any change whatsoever in habitat.
And that is a very different, that's a game-changer.
The researchers are learning both about current and past pika populations.
And what's unique about this species is that the same survey we can tell not only where
they are now, but where they used to be. We walk contour lines on this talus patch and
look for three types of evidence: Do we see them? Most frequently we hear them.
They use their calls to announce their territory, to attract mates and for warning calls.
And then, thirdly, they collect this vegetation that they consume over the winter. And they store
it up in what's called a hay pile. And we're looking for those fresh hay piles and then
we also look for these pellets. And in areas where there are no pikas any more, these pellets
and the old hay piles tell us where they used to be.
The study results have varied.
We're seeing changes in their distribution that are pretty dramatic in some locations
and very little changes in other places.
In the Great Basin between the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains, we're seeing quite a
bit of distributional change. Whereas in the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountain chain,
we're not seeing quite as much change there.
I've been able to show that their range is really quite wide.
We've seen that in fact that they can utilize these much lower elevation slopes than had
been thought. And they are basically saturating every available habitat in this part of California.
They're saturating habitat over nearly 6,000 feet of elevation range suggests that they
have a good stronghold, and that even if some of the environments were to become inhospitable,
there's enormous range of habitat. So, if I were speaking about the future of pika in
this part of the Sierra, I would say it looks very good.
We continue to address a diversity of hypotheses and compare the evidence in support of these
competing explanations of what's going on, and across numerous analyses, it's becoming
increasingly clear that a larger and larger percentage of what's going on is being explained by climate alone.
It's still quite controversial. Ours is just a single time slice so what we need to
do is continue to monitor and see if these locations that we're seeing as active now
continue to be occupied.
We're interested in providing information and getting insights that can help managers
think about ways to actively conserve wildlife species.
Research and management, working together to help restore our public lands.