A Tale of Two Pikas: from dueling subspecies to dueling visions of the future for an alpine icon

When: April 23, 7:15-8:45pm

Where: Unitarian Universalist Church of Boulder + Zoom (hybrid)

There once was a fluffy little squeaky-toy of a species, the American pika, that was also a four-season alpinist. There are pikas that live their whole lives looking down on Everest Base Camp, and there are pikas that live in the desert heat of Lava Beds National Monument. So, which is it? Is the pika a hapless poster child for climate disaster, even though it manages to survive in some of the harshest landscapes on the planet? This talk will show the pika from many angles (and mostly in pictures rather than graphs), to celebrate the diversity and perfection of one of the many species that might soon become too rare to really study.

Chris Ray studies the dynamics of plant and animal populations threatened by climate change and habitat fragmentation. Her recent projects include estimating bird trends in national parks, and her longest projects have focused on the American pika. Chris has a PhD in Population Biology and is a scientist with The Institute for Bird Populations in California and also the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at CU Boulder. She has studied pikas from here to Mongolia, and is the scientific advisor for the Colorado Pika Project, a community of volunteers who study how pikas respond to environmental change.

In-Person Gathering – BCAS welcomes everyone back to in-person programs at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Boulder. Doors open at 7 PM for socializing and the program begins at 7:15. While the church is no longer requiring masks, we encourage you to wear your favorite high-quality mask, and we will provide free surgical masks for anyone who needs one. Please stay home if you feel sick, and watch the program on Zoom!

Online Gathering – The meeting room will open at 7:10, the program starts at 7:15. Questions for the speaker will be taken from the chat feature of the Zoom session. Zoom access details will be posted here by the day of the program.