Lucas Moyer-Horner is a community and population ecologist, with his research focused on the American pika. While receiving his Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he studied how climate change is affecting pika behavior and how pika populations are restricted by their environment. He is now an associate instructor of biology at the University of Utah. I spoke with him over the phone about the threats climate change poses to the American pika, and he explored his opinions on pika’s intrinsic value and the controversial denial of the Fish and Wildlife Service in listing the pika as protected…

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will not list the pika on the Endangered Species Act, even as pikas are vanishing throughout their range.

The American pika is a small and charismatic mountain-dwelling mammal. It resides in the same family as the rabbits and hares, and is often heard before it is seen. Pikas are loved by all who stumble across their rock pile habitats, but within the next century, these outspoken mammals could be silenced by climate change.

Since pikas live in cold, high elevation habitats, they are extremely sensitive to heat, unable to survive temperatures above around 78…

Wildlife are feeling the adverse effects of climate change today, especially those that inhabit alpine regions, like the pika.

The pika is perhaps one of the most at-risk species from climate change. This cute little mammal, whom Pikachu was inspired by, belongs to the family Lagomorpha, which also includes the rabbits and hares. They live at high mountainous elevations in taluses, or rock piles, throughout western North America. Local extirpations are occurring at the lower elevations because populations are having to move higher up the mountains. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has declined to list the American pika as…