‘So elated’: Nearly extinct species seen in California preserve for first time in decades – By Amanda Bartlett (SFGATE) / June 22, 2023
When a photo of a burrow-dwelling critter with an unusually long tail was captured by a trail camera in the rugged mountains of the Sierra Azul Open Space Preserve in 2019, researchers were baffled. The animal in question — a Santa Cruz kangaroo rat — hadn’t been seen in the area in more than 75 years, and was listed by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife as a “critically imperiled subspecies,” meaning it was at risk of becoming extinct.
The Santa Cruz kangaroo rat, which is closely related to chipmunks and gophers, gets its name from the massive hind legs it uses to hop around. Like a kangaroo, the critter also has pouches, but instead of using them to carry babies, they come in handy as a kind of built-in storage unit in their cheeks that they use while foraging for food.
Photographer and ecologist Ken Hickman discovered the presence of the elusive rodent in 2019, using his own custom-designed and -built wildlife cameras. This April, a group of Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District wildlife biologists and UC Santa Cruz researchers set out before dawn on an expedition throughout the preserve to see if they could find proof of other individuals.
