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Chipmunk’s disappearance signals changing Sierra


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By Tom Knudson, Sacramento Bee

With button-brown eyes, striped cheeks and a bushy orange-black tail, the Inyo chipmunk has darted among the gnarled pines of the Sierra Nevada for centuries.

But it has apparently vanished.

“We have not been able to find it anywhere,” said James Patton, a retired UC Berkeley professor of zoology who has scoured parts of the high Sierra over the past two years in search of the elusive species.

No one knows why – or when – the species vanished. There is talk about air pollution and competition from other chipmunk species. But most of the speculation centers on climate change, which has brought warming temperatures, earlier snowmelt and changing forest conditions to the region over the past century.

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Comments

Comments (5)
  1. Steve says - Posted: October 17, 2010

    I think they are all in my yard

  2. Julie Threewit says - Posted: October 17, 2010

    Ditto Steve’s comment. I guess it’s the Meyers chipmunk in our yard. Maybe the Inyo chipmunk headed over the eastern Sierra’s.

  3. Virginia Matus-Glenn says - Posted: October 17, 2010

    I’ll volunteer to ship them lots of ours!

  4. grannylou says - Posted: October 19, 2010

    We also noticed that the voles (field mice) suddenly disappeared from our backyard in the Keys this year. They were there until July. We also have had hardly any Canada Geese this summer. We believe this is an indication of “something” changing in the environment, but what?

  5. Meeting attendee says - Posted: October 19, 2010

    All the voles moved to my house.
    Want em back?