Pikas find a home at Craters of the Moon

BOISE, Idaho — Researcher Erik Beever has watched the effects of climate change play out in front of his eyes.

The U.S. Geological Survey research biologist from Bozeman, Mont., studies American pikas, which are disappearing from the Great Basin that stretches from Idaho to California and where Beever and other researchers found them just a decade ago.

A new study published this week in the journal Ecology says less winter snowpack and summer rain are the major factors in the pika’s disappearance, even where good habitat is available.

The size of pika populations did not correlate with the extent of habitat, in either the 1990s or 2000s, according to the researchers who visited sites where pikas have been recorded in surveys going back more than a century. In other words, precipitation is the deciding factor in the health of the American pika in the Great Basin, no matter how much good habitat is available.

Climate change’s role

“Precipitation appears to be important because it can influence the amount of food available for pikas in the summer, and an insulating snowpack can minimize exposure of pikas to extreme cold-stress,” Beever said.

The results suggested that climate change may be creating a new factor in the suitability of habitat.

Snowpacks have been declining since the 1930s across the West at the same time that temperatures have been rising, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

Most surprising to the researchers was that smaller pika populations didn’t necessarily put them at higher risk for extinction.

“We were surprised to find that sites with higher extinction risk in 1999 had larger populations in 2003 to 2008,” Beever said.

The earth’s warming happened gradually for most of the period since the cooler Pleistocene era 10,000 years ago, Beever said. But in the past two decades, he and other scientists have seen Great Basin pika distribution reduced in terms of years and decades instead of centuries and millennia.

Most of the remaining habitat is in alpine areas, like Idaho’s Sawtooths and other mountain ranges. But Beever found in the late 1990s that pikas were thriving in Craters of the Moon, the high desert Snake River Plain near Arco dominated by 2,000- to 15,000-year-old lava flows, caves and fissures.

In most of the rest of their range, pikas live only in talus, broken rock on steep mountainsides or at the bases of cliffs. In these piles of scree, the little creatures with thick fur coats find refuge from the 77 to 85 degree temperatures that they can’t tolerate.

But Craters of the Moon National Preserve’s lava structures were filled with pikas when Beever surveyed the areas in 1995. The physical complexity of the lava structures was the key, he found. Throughout the lava, he said, there are thermal “microrefugia” — the cooler places that pikas like.

When Mackenzie Jeffress, a University of Idaho graduate student now with the Nevada Department of Wildlife, visited Craters in 2010 and 2011, the pika were still thriving in the lava structures.

Home in the Craters

But in Craters’ talus fields, where pikas were found as recently as the 1980s, they were gone.

“They remain in the lava flows that provide those suitable microrefugia from climatic stresses,” Beever said.

Craters of the Moon has a high-desert climate, with average high temperatures during the summer around 80 degrees and average low temperatures in the winter in the teens. Its relatively flat lava flows connect to the Pioneer Mountains, the southern edge of the northern Rockies.

From there, the pikas have been biologically connected all the way to British Columbia, the northern edge of their habitat today. Craters of the Moon is among the lowest-elevation sites where pikas survive today.

Talk to us

> Give us your news tips.

> Send us a letter to the editor.

> More Herald contact information.

More in Local News

A firefighter stands in silence before a panel bearing the names of L. John Regelbrugge and Kris Regelbrugge during the ten-year remembrance of the Oso landslide on Friday, March 22, 2024, at the Oso Landslide Memorial in Oso, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
‘Flood of emotions’ as Oso Landslide Memorial opens on 10th anniversary

Friends, family and first responders held a moment of silence at 10:37 a.m. at the new 2-acre memorial off Highway 530.

Julie Petersen poses for a photo with images of her sister Christina Jefferds and Jefferds’ grand daughter Sanoah Violet Huestis next to a memorial for Sanoah at her home on March 20, 2024 in Arlington, Washington. Peterson wears her sister’s favorite color and one of her bangles. (Annie Barker / The Herald)
‘It just all came down’: An oral history of the Oso mudslide

Ten years later, The Daily Herald spoke with dozens of people — first responders, family, survivors — touched by the deadliest slide in U.S. history.

Victims of the Oso mudslide on March 22, 2014. (Courtesy photos)
Remembering the 43 lives lost in the Oso mudslide

The slide wiped out a neighborhood along Highway 530 in 2014. “Even though you feel like you’re alone in your grief, you’re really not.”

Director Lucia Schmit, right, and Deputy Director Dara Salmon inside the Snohomish County Department of Emergency Management on Friday, March 8, 2024, in Everett, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
How Oso slide changed local emergency response ‘on virtually every level’

“In a decade, we have just really, really advanced,” through hard-earned lessons applied to the pandemic, floods and opioids.

Ron and Gail Thompson at their home on Monday, March 4, 2024 in Oso, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
In shadow of scarred Oso hillside, mudslide’s wounds still feel fresh

Locals reflected on living with grief and finding meaning in the wake of a catastrophe “nothing like you can ever imagine” in 2014.

Imagine Children's Museum's incoming CEO, Elizabeth "Elee" Wood. (Photo provided by Imagine Children's Museum)
Imagine Children’s Museum in Everett will welcome new CEO in June

Nancy Johnson, who has led Imagine Children’s Museum in Everett for 25 years, will retire in June.

Kelli Littlejohn, who was 11 when her older sister Melissa Lee was murdered, speaks to a group of investigators and deputies to thank them for bringing closure to her family after over 30 years on Thursday, March 28, 2024, at Snohomish County Superior Court in Everett, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
‘She can rest in peace’: Jury convicts Bothell man in 1993 killing

Even after police arrested Alan Dean in 2020, it was unclear if he would stand trial. He was convicted Thursday in the murder of Melissa Lee, 15.

Ariel Garcia, 4, was last seen Wednesday morning in an apartment in the 4800 block of Vesper Dr. (Photo provided by Everett Police)
Everett police searching for missing child, 4

Ariel Garcia was last seen Wednesday at an apartment in the 4800 block of Vesper Drive. The child was missing under “suspicious circumstances.”

The rezoned property, seen here from the Hillside Vista luxury development, is surrounded on two sides by modern neighborhoods Monday, March 25, 2024, in Lake Stevens, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
Despite petition, Lake Stevens OKs rezone for new 96-home development

The change faced resistance from some residents, who worried about the effects of more density in the neighborhood.

Rep. Suzan DelBene, left, introduces Xichitl Torres Small, center, Undersecretary for Rural Development with the U.S. Department of Agriculture during a talk at Thomas Family Farms on Monday, April 3, 2023, in Snohomish, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Under new federal program, Washingtonians can file taxes for free

At a press conference Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene called the Direct File program safe, easy and secure.

Former Snohomish County sheriff’s deputy Jeremie Zeller appears in court for sentencing on multiple counts of misdemeanor theft Wednesday, March 27, 2024, at Snohomish County Superior Court in Everett, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
Ex-sheriff’s deputy sentenced to 1 week of jail time for hardware theft

Jeremie Zeller, 47, stole merchandise from Home Depot in south Everett, where he worked overtime as a security guard.

Everett
11 months later, Lake Stevens man charged in fatal Casino Road shooting

Malik Fulson is accused of shooting Joseph Haderlie to death in the parking lot at the Crystal Springs Apartments last April.

Support local journalism

If you value local news, make a gift now to support the trusted journalism you get in The Daily Herald. Donations processed in this system are not tax deductible.