Help Protect Pikas From Global Warming

"Pint-sized rabbit relatives, pikas live in high-elevation boulder fields surrounded by mountain meadows throughout the western United States. Specially adapted to cold alpine conditions, they cannot tolerate high temperatures. Rising temperatures and drier conditions in summer can expose the animals to heat stroke, reduce food in mountain meadows, and make conditions too hot for them to find food. In winter, because they remain active rather than hibernate, pikas rely on insulating snowpack and their dense coats to keep them warm – but the loss of winter snowpack due to climate change exposes them to deadly winter cold snaps.

Rising temperatures caused by greenhouse gas pollution have already caused drastic losses of lower-elevation pika populations. More than a third of documented pika populations in the Great Basin mountains of Nevada and Oregon have gone extinct in the past century as temperatures warmed. In California, pikas have moved upslope in Yosemite National Park over the past century, and they have largely disappeared from the Bodie Hills in the Sierra Nevada mountains in recent decades. Scientists project that global warming will virtually eliminate suitable habitat for the pika in this century if greenhouse gas emissions are not drastically reduced.

It’s not too late to prevent the extinction of the pika, but we must act quickly to slow global warming. The Fish and Wildlife Service needs to hear from you. Please use the form below to support the listing of the American pika and urge the government to reduce greenhouse gas pollution to levels that will protect the pika and other wildlife species from extinction. "

Act Now!



Source: Center for Biological Diversity
Image:http://fuzzywuzzyblog.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/pika.jpg