LIKE a canary in a coal mine, a small mammal native to the American West is warning about climate change. And the news isn’t good. The most comprehensive survey of the guinea-pig-like pika in 50 years suggests that rising temperatures might make trouble for some small animals sooner than anyone expected.
“This is one of the first examples of a mammal showing widespread response to climate change,” says ecologist Erik Beever of the US Geological Survey in Corvallis, Oregon. “We tended to assume that these things happen over centuries or millennia, but my study suggests these populations are dying out in just decades.”…
