WASHINGTON — Compared to the polar bear, the American pika is downright tiny.
Weighing only 4 ounces to 6 ounces, this small, rabbitlike mammal with thick brown hair that lives on boulder-covered slopes near alpine meadows in Western mountain ranges, could represent the latest effort to use the Endangered Species Act to combat global warming.
Environmentalists filed a lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. district court in Sacramento, Calif., to force the Bush administration to decide whether to list the pika for protection under the act. The lawsuit claims the animal is threatened by rising temperatures and says the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has dragged its feet for months on whether to list it.
In May, the polar bear was protected as a threatened species under the act, but Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne made clear at the time that the Endangered Species Act was not intended to regulate global climate change.
The Fish and Wildlife Service had no comment on the lawsuit.
