Pika | Tiziana Bardelli, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Pika | Tiziana Bardelli, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Colorado Parks & Wildlife has classified Pika, a small mountain animal related to rabbits, as a "State Special Concern" species. Denver Zoo and Rocky Mountain Wild are leading the Colorado Pika Project, and they need the public's help to collect data on where pikas are being seen and where they are being killed.
Means of helping researchers keep a tab on the pika population in the state can be done in two ways: by visiting designated monitoring sites to look for pikas, or by downloading the Pika Patrol app and reporting sightings from anywhere.
"[Pikas] are really sensitive to temperature," Alex Wells, community science coordinator at Denver Zoo said in a video, 9News reported. "They can't stand the heat at all. And so the biggest concern that we have is that with climate change they might start to disappear in Colorado."
Anyone interested in participating is required to attend field training before visiting a site to learn how to collect reliable and useful data. The next training sessions are slated for next year.
The project intends to examine the possible effects of climate change on pika and Colorado's alpine ecosystems through long-term monitoring. The information is shared with scientists and land managers, but it is also used to get Coloradans thinking about conservation and the effects of climate change in their own backyards.
These small mammals, about the size of a russet potato, make their homes in mountain talus fields, where they stack flower and grass hay in the summer and eat it all winter long when the snows come.
Wells said pikas can't survive for more than an hour in temperatures at or above 70 degrees. In order to avoid excessive heat, they hide out from view beneath large boulders, but the longer they stay in there, the less time they have for food gathering. Then, when winter comes, they use the snow to keep warm. Wells has expressed concern that pikas may be in imminent danger of being frozen to death during particularly cold months as snowpack continues to decrease and snow melt begins earlier and earlier.
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