Day 27: Good news for gorillas, and pikas too

Six hundred western lowland gorillas will be protected with the establishment of Cameroon's new preserve. Credit: Julie Larsen Maher, Wildlife Conservation Society

Fortune has smiled on two species in radically different parts of the world and the animal kingdom over the past week, as United States biologists announced a plan to study the American pika for possible protection, and the government of Cameroon unveiled its intention to create a new national park which will protect more than 600 gorillas.

In both cases, conservation groups led the charge.

The rabbit-like American pika (Ochotona princeps) got lucky when the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, responding to a lawsuit filed by the Center for Biological Diversity and Earthjustice, agreed to assess whether the increasingly rare animal qualifies for protection under the Endangered Species Act.

And Cameroon’s new park was informed by gorilla population surveys conducted by the Wildlife Conservation Society. Called Deng Deng National Park, the new protected area measures about 224 square miles (580 square kilometers) in size — roughly the size of Chicago. Besides gorillas, it will protect other threatened species such as chimpanzees, forest elephants and buffalo.

The American pika will be considered for federal protection, after two environmental groups sued the federal government. Credit: Earthjustice

The American pika lives in cold mountain peaks in the United States, usually where temperatures stay below freezing for more than half the year. Biologists at the Tucson, Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity believe the pika can overheat and die when exposed to temperatures as low as 78 degrees Fahrenheit (25.5 degrees C) for just a few hours.

Rising temperatures appear to have made the normal pika territories increasingly inhospitable, according to research presented in the Center’s original 2007 petition (PDF) to protect the species. The Center cited studies showing that pika have disappeared from more than a third of their previously known habitats in Nevada and Oregon, and other populations have moved nearly 1,000 feet upslope from where they used to be found.

Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law firm in Oakland, California, said the move makes the pika the first mammal outside of Alaska to be considered for federal protection due to threats resulting from global warming. The polar bear was listed as endangered last year following sea ice declines that have reduced its habitat.

Besides the immediate danger of overheating, according to Earthjustice, global warming threatens pikas by shortening their food-gathering season — they hoard food for the winter like chipmunks – changing the types of plants that grow where they live, and reducing the insulating snowpack that protects them during the coldest months. Under the settlement, Fish and Wildlife will conduct its initial assessment of the species by May.

As for gorillas, the Wildlife Conservation Society’s surveys prompted Cameroon’s Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife to list Deng Deng as a priority area for protection, containing the most northern population of western lowland gorillas.

Western lowland gorilla. Credit: Julie Larsen Maher, Wildlife Conservation Society

The Society has a history in Cameroon that spans more than two decades, and Deng Deng is not the first park to result. In late November of 2008, the organization helped Cameroon to create Takamanda National Park, which now forms part of an important trans-boundary protected area with Nigeria’s Cross River National Park and protects the Cross River gorilla.

The western lowland gorilla is the most populous of the four gorilla subspecies, with more than 125,000 living in the northern Republic of Congo. Other subspecies include the eastern lowland or “Grauer’s” gorillas, the mountain gorillas made famous by Dian Fossey and George Schaller, and Cross River gorillas, which number fewer than 300 individuals along the border region of Cameroon and Nigeria.

Additional support for the conservation of Deng Deng’s biodiversity will come from the French Government, specifically through the French Agency for International Development. The agency has agreed to provide 735,000 Euros (about $930,000) to fund the first three-year phase (a three-year period) of the project, to be jointly implemented by the Conservation Society and the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife.

The Wildlife Conservation Society has joined organizations worldwide to celebrate the United Nation’s Year of the Gorilla, with widespread awareness activities including “Run For The Wild,” a 5-kilometer (3.1-mile) run on the Bronx Zoo grounds.

Much of this information came from press releases by Earthjustice(pika) and the Wildlife Conservation Society (gorillas).