A tiny critter, which hasn’t been seen in a California county in decades, has been found in the mountains.
After setting up trail cameras in the Sierra Azul Preserve, Ken Hickman captured images of the “elusive” Santa Cruz kangaroo rat in 2019, The Santa Cruz Sun Sentinel reported. Hickman, an idependent researcher, built trail cameras and, with a permit, placed them around the preserve.
“I was shocked when I found these animals. It was unbelievable,” Hickman, who had identified the preserve as a potential habitat, told the news outlet. “People have been looking for them for years.”
The species, which hasn’t been documented in Santa Clara County since 1947, is listed as a “critically imperiled subspecies,” meaning the animal is at high risk of extinction, according to the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District.
Photos of Hickman’s discovery left Matt Sharp Chaney, a wildlife biologist with Midpen, “awestruck,” Sharp Chaney told NBC Bay Area in a video posted on the agency’s YouTube.
From there, “it took a lot of work and a lot of diligence to find” the rodents, he told the outlet.
“It wasn’t an instant success story,” Sharp Chaney told the outlet.
After trekking through the preserve last year, researchers from the University of California, Santa Cruz and Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District found several Santa Cruz kangaroo rats, the agency said in a June 12 Facebook post.
The animals are “neither a kangaroo nor a rat” but are instead “more closely related to chipmunks,” according to the agency.
“Although small in stature, kangaroo rats are considered a ‘keystone’ species, meaning its activities have great influence on the plants and animals that make up its habitat,” the agency said.
The species is only known to live in one other area, the Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, according to the agency.
To help support the rodents’ population, the agency said it is helping ongoing genetic research being conducted with a “collaborative team,” which includes researchers from UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz and California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo.
The agency said it plans to use the results from the study to potentially get the rodent protection under the California Endangered Species Act.
In addition to genetic research, the agency said it is creating a “habitat and population management plan,” meant to find improvements for the species’s habitat to help support the animal’s population.
Sierra Azul Preserve is about 20 miles northeast of Santa Cruz.
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