The American Pika is a animal that is often pointed to as an indication of the harmful impacts of global warming. Much like the image of the polar bear clinging to an ice flow as if it were life preserver, the Pika has some very powerful images and messages that can be conveyed. Granted the Pika doesn’t have that iconic picture to pique interest, but Pikas have a a few attention-grabbing cards up their furry sleeve. Pikas are cute, not pests, industrious workers, consummate food archivists, and are essentially walking the plank to extinction.
The problem facing the American Pika is much like in a movie when a bad guy chases the protagonist to an inescapable cliff, but the Pika’s bad guy is climate warming and the cliff is the smaller and smaller available area at the peak of a mountain. The Pika has nowhere else to go once it reaches the top of the mountain.
This movement of the habitat available and appropriate for the Pika is called a range shift. The range shift and the temperature requirements for the Pika are putting their long term survival in a precarious position.
