The North American pika like the protection and cool refuge of high-elevation talus slopes. (Photo: US Forest Service)

California is one of five places on earth with a Mediterranean climate. It has enough endemic plant species to be its own “floristic province.” It’s also what biologists refer to as a biodiversity hotspot. So it’s not surprising that a report by the Endangered Species Coalition includes three places either completely or partially within California in its list of ten of the most important locations to protect endangered species.

The report highlights areas across the U.S. that are most threatened, such as the Everglades, and places that provide home to the greatest number of endangered species, like Hawaii.

California locations include the Sonora Desert, the Sierra Nevada, and the Bay Delta. The coalition, an activist group which aims to stem the tide of species loss, says the gravest threats in these California places — no surprise here, either — revolve around water: not enough, too much, or badly timed.

In the Sonora Desert, drought threatens species like the desert tortoise. The Sierra and the Delta are linked, since the former provides water for the latter. Species face different challenges depending on where they are along that watershed. Down in the Bay Area, trout, salmon, and the Delta smelt are losing habitat to development and losing water to irrigation canals. Up in the Sierra, the report explains that yellow-legged frogs and pika are confronted with thinner snowpack and warmer temperatures.

About those pika: The Endangered Species Coalition doesn’t list any supporting literature, and favors messaging over nuance in this report. There is an ongoing debate over pika colonies in California and Nevada. The Center for Biological Diversity, a coalition member, has petitioned both state and the federal wildlife agencies to list the pika as endangered. That listing has so far been denied, and for good reason, according to Forest Service ecologist Connie Millar, who says that in California, pika are “extremely abundant.”

Millar is concerned that all the attention focused on pika draws away from other species in the Sierra that may indeed be in climate change-induced trouble, like Belding’s ground squirrels and yellow-bellied marmots.

Just as delegates from 193 nations agreed to a voluntary moratorium on geoengineering research last week at the international Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Nagoya, Japan, the US House Science and Technology Committee issued a report outlining how federal geoengineering research could be pursued in the United States. The international agreement to ban the research does not apply to the US, which has not ratified the CBD. (More from The Washington Post and Climate Central.)

$9.6 Million for Alternative Fuel and Car Technologies

The California Energy Commission just announced $9.6 million for eight projects focused on electric cars and alternative fuel technologies. The largest grant is nearly $3 million to Leyden Energy of Fremont, CA, for the production of lithium ion cells for electric car batteries. The company and its partner, Green Vehicles of Salinas, provided matching funds for the project. (Full CEC press release)

Another Solar Project Gets Federal Approval

Federal land managers approved another solar thermal project in California, this time in Riverside County. The 250-megawatt Genesis Solar Energy Project now joins the 400-MW Ivanpah Project, the 700-MW Ocotillo Project, and and a smaller photovoltaic (PV) project by San Ramon-based Chevron Corp., that have already been cleared to break ground by the Bureau of Land Management.  (More from the LA Times)

New Mexico Panel Approves Cap-and-Trade, with Conditions

This week, the New Mexico state Environmental Improvement Board approved moving forward with a cap-and-trade strategy as long as other members of the Western Climate Initiative, such as California, also commit to cap and trade (New Mexico’s governor-elect is opposed to a carbon cap.)  The California Air Resources Board announced a plan last week for a carbon-trading program that would regulate 400 metric tons of emissions by 2015.  (More from Bloomberg)

The San Bernardino flying squirrel is a subspecies of the northern flying squirrel, pictured here. (Photo: US Fish and Wildlife Service)

The San Francisco-based Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) filed petitions with the US Fish and Wildlife Service today to protect four mountaintop species from climate change, including the San Bernardino flying squirrel.  The CBD is requesting that the species be listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act and that critical habitat be designated.

The San Bernardino flying squirrel is a subspecies of the northern flying squirrel. Historically it has thrived in the high-elevation conifer forests of Southern California, in just two locations: the San Bernardino and San Jacinto Mountains.  But according to Shaye Wolf, a biologist at CBD, the species has likely disappeared from the San Jacinto Mountains in the past few decades. Studies indicate that the remaining population is isolated in the San Bernardino Mountains, which is bordered on the north by the Mojave Desert, a formidable barrier to migration.

In its petition (PDF), the CBD argues that as temperatures warm, the squirrel’s habitat is shifting upslope and may eventually become compressed or disappear all together.

“The squirrel has been lost on a sizable portion of its range,” said Wolf.  “It’s worrisome that this is the last habitat patch for this species, and there are no options for northward movement and limited ones for moving up in elevation.”

At the same time,  drought is threatening the squirrel’s primary food source — truffles.  Truffles favor cool, damp environments, which may become rarer as the climate changes.

“As drought increases, there are real concerns that this will lead to a decline in truffle abundance,” said Wolf.

Wolf said the San Bernardino flying squirrel habitat is also threatened by air pollution, certain forest management practices, and development.

The other species the CBD has simultaneously moved to protect are the ‘i’iwi, a Hawaiian songbird; the white-tailed ptarmigan, a grouse-like bird of the Rocky Mountains; and Bicknell’s thrush, a northeastern U.S. songbird.

Earlier this year, the US Fish and Wildlife Service denied a similar petition submitted by the CBD on behalf of the American pika.

“Like the pika, the flying squirrel is showing us that climate change is impacting wildlife in the mountains in our own backyard,” said Wolf.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has 90 days to determine whether the species may be warranted for listing.  If so, the agency has 12 months to make its decision.

American Pika, Photo: Doug Von Gausig

The high-alpine rabbit relative, the American pika, does not warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act, according to a ruling Thursday by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The decision was required by a court order stemming from a lawsuit brought by the San Francisco-based Center for Biological Diversity against the agency, for failing to respond to a petition submitted by the Center in 2007.

The CBD petition cited climate change as the cause for population decline in pika populations in the mountains of Nevada’s Great Basin. Because the creatures can die from overheating at temperatures as low as 78 degrees, and research suggests that a warming climate has led to major losses in lower-elevation populations, pushing pika to migrate to higher elevations. Some biologists are concerned that if temperatures rise high enough, they may reach the mountain-tops and run out of hospitable habitat.

“By not listing the pika, the decision is not respecting the best available science,” said Shaye Wolf, a staff biologist at the CBD. “The science is very clear. Scientists in the Great Basin will tell you that their research is showing that pika are disappearing and that the losses are linked to climate change: heat stress in the summer and loss of snowpack in the winter.”

Wolf said that the federal agency is required to use the “best available science” in making its ruling. She said that the CBD may challenge the decision on this basis.

“The (government’s) interpretation of the studies is that even though pika are disappearing and will continue to disappear, they will be able to cope,” said Wolf. “That’s not consistent with what we’re seeing. It’s a bizarre argument that pika will adapt. There’s no basis for that claim.

Had the federal agency ruled the other way, the pika would have been the first animal to make the endangered list as a direct result of climate change.  Last year, the Obama Administration denied a similar petition for the Alaskan spotted seal, Wolf said.

The scientific community itself is split about whether the pika warrants a federal listing. While research shows that some populations of pika are declining, such as in the Great Basin, not everyone agrees that the entire species is facing extinction.

The CBD also has a pika case still pending at the state level.  The California Fish and Game Commission has twice denied CBD requests for a status review of the American pika. The organization is currently challenging the state’s second denial.

For more background on the CBD’s efforts to list the pika, see Craig Miller’s blog posts from May 2009.

American pika. Photo by Chris Ray.

Note that an update to this story was posted on May 6.

The hamster-sized, high-elevation haymaker known as the American Pika has had its “day” in court–and then some. Now it may be making inroads toward listing as a threatened species, while questions persist over whether that would be premature.

Friday was the deadline for officials at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to decide whether to further consider the pika for listing under the federal Endangered Species Act.

The San Francisco-based Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) has been pursuing listing for the pika under both the state and federal Endangered Species Acts. On April 16, a Superior Court judge in San Francisco ruled that the California Fish and Game Commission applied too stringent a standard, when it voted last year to reject the CBD’s petition to list the pika under the California law. The CBD says it expects the court to formally order the state to go back and take a second look at whether the critter deserves protection.

Meanwhile federal wildlife officials had until May 1 to decide whether to formally review the pika’s plight and consider listing it under federal law. A response is expected to be published in the Federal Register this week.

Complicating the case is an apparent difference between the fate of pika populations in the Great Basin, where field research clearly shows pika colonies in trouble, and colonies in the Sierra Nevada range, which may be faring better.

Pika thrive only at high elevations, in the rocky conditions known as talus. Their band of tolerance for temperature is very narrow, so some biologists see them as an indicator species for global warming. Temperatures that humans may consider merely balmy, can be fatal for pika.