The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last week denied Endangered Species Act protection to the American pika, a small mountain-dwelling mammal that environmentalists say is on the frontlines of global-warming-driven endangerment.
The decision was required under a court order in a lawsuit brought by the Center for Biological Diversity, represented by Earthjustice, against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for failing to respond to a scientific petition submitted by the Center in 2007.
The pika is adapted to cold alpine conditions and can die from
overheating when exposed to temperatures as mild as 78 degrees
Fahrenheit for just a few hours. Rising summer temperatures threaten
pikas with heat stress and reduce their ability to gather food and move
to new areas, while diminished snowpack in winter leaves them
vulnerable to cold snaps.
Rising temperatures caused by greenhouse
gas pollution have already led to dramatic losses of lower-elevation
pika populations, pushing pikas upslope until they run out of habitat.
More than a third of documented pika populations in the Great Basin
mountains of Nevada and southern Oregon have gone extinct in the past
century amid rising temperatures.
Two separate studies have found that
climate change will eliminate suitable habitat and push pikas toward
extinction throughout much of the western United States in this century
if greenhouse gas emissions are not drastically reduced. In a January 2010 article in the journal Bioscience, pika scientists highlighted the pika’s vulnerability to climate change:
"There’s enough evidence to say that pikas are going to be among the first mammals to be adversely affected by climate change."
The article continues: "The
problem with global warming is that if [pikas] lose [their] snowpack,
which provides insulation in winter, they freeze to death, and if the
ambient air temperature heats up too much in summer, then they fry.
That’s the challenge…They’re already at the top of the mountain. If you
heat it up substantially, there’s no place for them to go."
Earthjustic says the Obama administration has blocked Endangered Species Act protection for
other climate-change-imperiled species, and has made little progress on
overall listings. Last year, the Obama administration denied listing to
the spotted seal off Alaska despite the rapid melting of its sea-ice
habitat; it also upheld the Bush administration’s decisions to deny
listing to the climate-change imperiled ribbon seal and emperor
penguin. During its first year in office, the Obama administration
listed only two species under the Endangered Species Act compared to an
average of eight species per year under Bush and 65 species per year
under Clinton.
"This is a political decision that ignores the science and the law," said Center biologist Shaye Wolf. "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. Instead, the Interior Department has chosen to sit on its hands instead of taking meaningful action to protect our nation’s wildlife from climate change."
Loading...