Each summer, the volunteer Pika Patrol roams the Rockies in service to the tiny, climate-threatened animal
by the National Park Service and three universities projected that, by 2100, pikas could effectively be gone from Rocky Mountain National Park due to loss of suitable living conditions.that has Ray most worried. Over the past several decades, shorter winters and less snowfall in the West has meant the snowpack melts earlier each spring, reducing the pikas’ insulating blanket of snow cover.
The microclimate under the rocks plays an important role in pikas’ summertime survival too, helping them stay cool. “[Pikas] are physiologically sensitive to high temperatures in summer, more so than some of the other species,” says The cool microclimate that pikas rely on is the same one that preserves ice—ice that melts late in the summer and flows into creeks and reservoirs, providing water for millions of people. “I think that where pikas are disappearing, we are also losing our subsurface ice,” Rays says. “So [pikas] are like an indicator species for the health of our western watershed.”Pikas spend the summer months preparing for the winter by making frequent forays between the talus and adjacent meadows.