Alaska is essentially this pika’s entire US range, and its densest reports come from the talus slopes of Denali National Park, with more scattered across the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, the Copper River delta, and Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. Outside a thin strip of adjoining Yukon, this species lives nowhere else in North America.
Unlike the marmots and ground squirrels sharing the same rockpiles, a collared pika never hibernates. Through late summer it clips grasses and alpine wildflowers and hauls them back to a dry spot under the rocks, building a haypile it lives off all winter while staying active beneath the snowpack rather than sleeping through it.
Records climb through early summer and peak in July and August, once the high country clears of snow. That near-total absence of winter records reflects how hard the high alpine is to reach in snow season, not any real disappearance, since the pika keeps foraging from its haypile under the drifts.
Full species profile
