China’s Ili pika (Ochotona iliensis) looks remarkably like a miniature version of an Ewok from Return of the Jedi. Coincidentally, the animal was originally discovered the year that film came out, in 1983 and shortly after that they disappeared again.
It has been more than 20 years since one of the tiny, mountain dwelling rodents has been seen. In total there have only ever been 29 sightings of the animal which lives in the Tianshan Mountains of northwestern China.
In the summer of 2014 the drought in sightings came to an end. The scientist who originally discovered the animal, Weeding Li of the Xinjiang Institute for Ecology and Geography, gathered volunteers and went “hunting” with camera traps.
As they were setting up the cameras, a curious pika emerged long enough to be photographed.
“They found it hiding behind a rock, and they realized they had found the pika. They were very excited,” said Tatsuya Shin, a naturalist in China told National Geographic.
The Ili pika is about 8 inches long, light big ears and brown spots in its grey fur.
The animal is so reclusive that when Li discovered it on a survey of the region in 1983, even local herdsmen did not know what it was. It took Li two more trips to the region to find a second specimen and confirm that it was a previously undescribed species.
The Ili pika lives at elevations of 9,200 to 13,450 feet and feeds primarily on plants. An official estimate made in the 90s, shortly before the animal disappeared, put the total population at 2,000 and that number has likely declined since.
Like North American pika’s the Chinese mammal is sensitive to changes in temperature, as are the mountainous plants it feeds on.
The small numbers and elusive nature of the Chinese pikas makes it difficult to draw conclusions about their population and habits.
However, a recent study of the pika population in California’s mountains shows that their numbers are dwindling and that they are disappearing altogether from lower elevations.
In research published in the Journal of Biogeography, scientists showed that California pika’s had disappeared entirely from 10 of the 67 sites they surveyed and that the animals were at risk of extinction due to climate change.
“This same pattern of extinctions at sites with high summer temperatures has also been observed in the Great Basin region,” said Joseph Stewart, a graduate student at UC Santa Cruz in February.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) currently lists the animal’s population as “declining” and the species as “vulnerable” but, again, with only 29 sightings of the animal, ever, this is based on very limited data.
“Population declines have been observed for several locations inhabited by this species (Li and Smith 2005). A recent census indicated that Ochotona iliensis may be extirpated from Jilimalale and Hutubi South Mountains (Li and Smith 2005). Populations have declined in the regions of Jipuk, Tianger Apex, and Telimani Daban (Li and Smith 2005). Only one examined site, the Bayingou region, showed signs of previously observed abundance (Li and Smith 2005). An estimated 2,000 mature individuals existed in the early 1990’s (Li and Smith 2005),” according to the IUCN.
In addition to climate change, “grazing pressure from livestock and air pollution have likely contributed to the decline in the Ili pika,” according to National Geographic.
