![]() Pikas do not hibernate.Ī 1990 study showed that the average weight of their “haystacks” is 61 pounds and that in a 10-week time period one pika will make 14,000 foraging trips – 25 per hour – to secure its food stash. They spend the warm months gathering vegetation that will sustain them through the winter. Pikas are hardy critters that weigh just four ounces. “We were even finding them in these little talus areas and at lower elevations where I never guessed pika would have lived,” she said. Since the original surveys were completed, more than 900 occupied sites have been documented by Colorado Parks and Wildlife. In the spots where pikas were not found, the habitat was unsuitable. ![]() The animals were found in more than 90 percent of those sites. Her field crew surveyed 62 historical locations across the state to determine the presence of pikas. Seglund conducted a major research project to determine the health of pika populations in Colorado in 2008. ![]() “In their primary habitat, mainly at and above timberline, where there is lots of talus, we find pikas almost everywhere we look,” explained Amy Seglund, a species conservation biologist for Parks and Wildlife. ![]() While news stories have circulated recently that pikas are disappearing from the landscape, Colorado Parks and Wildlife researchers have found populations well-distributed throughout Colorado’s mountains. I think the alpine in large part is what makes Colorado what it is.RBC I The pika, one of the cutest and toughest little critters in the Rockies, appears to be thriving throughout Colorado’s high country. "As climate change goes on, which is expected to threaten pikas in Colorado like it's done in other places, we'll know if they start to decline and it's a lot easier to help a species when it starts to decline than when it's on the brink of extinction," he continued, "the idea is that by looking at this one animal, that's pretty easy to look for and listen for, we can get a sense of how the whole ecosystem is doing and it's such an important ecosystem for Colorado. Right now, he believes the population isn't on the decline like it is elsewhere, but there's still cause for concern. He believes in with a few more years, they'll be able to get a sense for how the pika population is doing. "The hope is that our volunteers are going to keep it up over the next 3 or 4 years, keep gathering data and get a good baseline," he said. "The Denver Zoo has a conservation program, we do work around the world and that includes right here in Colorado, and my role is that I coordinate our local community science projects so that's getting the public involved in helping our Colorado wildlife," he said. "It greatly exceeds what we could've done on the forest with our usually one-to-two-person wildlife crew," said Prusse.Ī lot of the training has been conducted by Alex Wells, Community Science Coordinator with the Denver Zoo. In the White River National Forest alone, there have been hundreds of participants who have put in thousands of hours. The volunteers are critical to the Pika Project. "Populations seem to be widespread across the forest and trends do appear to be stable, but we need at least a couple more years of monitoring to really start to answer that trends question and hopefully with this kind of volunteer participation that we're getting, we'll be able to get a long-term data set to look at trends over time," she said. Little has been known about the pika prior to the project but now, the data is starting pay off. It's called the Pika Project and now has 83 sites across the White River National Forest. In 2018, with help from Rocky Mountain Wild and the Denver Zoo, Prusse was able to help expand a project to study the rabbit relative. And a very noisy one at that … if you haven't seen them while hiking in Colorado's high country, you've probably heard their squeaks. Some researchers have described the pika (which is pronounced "PIKE-ah") as a russet potato with ears.
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