GLACIER: Poppies, Pikas and Lilies in a Climate of Change

As an undergraduate research assistant to Dr. Martha Apple, I was given the opportunity to study several species of rare alpine plants that dot Glacier Park’s iconic landscape.  These unsung heroes can serve as climate change indicators for scientists, who use the plants’ distribution and response to receding glaciers over time as a marker for environmental change.  

The glacier lily can serve as a key indicator for climate change within Glacier National Park because it is an early-season bloomer. Receding glaciers have caused the glacier lily to flower earlier than normal in the past century, which has had serious effects on the lily’s availability for pollinators and herbivores. The glacier lily, like many species of flora that are unique to the region, is exceptionally sensitive to changes in climate due to its occurrence at high elevations, its exposure to low temperatures, and its relatively short growing season. The glacier lily is so range-limited that it serves as one of the first species of flora in danger of becoming extinct due to global climate change.

However, there are many more, lesser known species of flora in the park that are at a much greater risk than the glacier lily of becoming extinct. One of these plants is the pygmy poppy (Papaver pygmaeum). The pygmy poppy is native to North America and can be found in British Columbia, Alberta and Montana. It has very narrow distribution throughout these areas, though, and there are only about 23 known occurrences of the pygmy poppy, with all occurrences being in the Waterton-Glacier area of the Rocky Mountains, most commonly east of the Continental Divide.

The pygmy poppy, most commonly found growing on rocky terrain such as scree or talus fields, is fairly small, with blue-green leaves growing up to five centimeters long. The flower, often orange-pink, can be about two centimeters wide. The pygmy poppy blooms in July and August.

The pygmy poppy has a G3 conservation status, meaning it is classified as “at risk” and “vulnerable,” because of its narrow distribution.

Alpine plants such as the pygmy poppy and the glacier lily serve as indicators of ecological change in alpine areas, because of their habitat on scree slopes in alpine regions. As snowfields recede and invasive species take over the delicate habitat of these plants, rare species such as these will disappear.

But why do we care about the disappearance of alpine habitat? The answer is simple—disappearance of the rocky ecosystem above treeline will not only result in the extinction of sensitive rare plants, but also of animal species such as the pika. A heat-sensitive chinchilla-like animal that lives in crevices of the rocky talus on high mountain peaks, the pika (genus Ochotona) is a small mammal that has short limbs and small rounded ears.  In recent years, activists have pushed to recognize the pika as threatened, to no avail.

Already, North America is saying goodbye to the endearing furballs whose cute and characteristic chirp-like calls entertain mountain trekkers around the world.  In the Great Basin area, pikas have already disappeared from 8 of 25 mountainous locations where they were previously documented.  In addition, the majority of pika absences in formerly known habitat areas have been recorded at the warmer, southern end of the animals’ range, supporting the claim that pikas are retreating to high mountain peaks as temperatures soar.

Although species of the pika have been steadily disappearing from mountain ranges for thousands of years, scientists have seen a sudden drop in population numbers since the turn of the twentieth century.  In addition, scientists are seeing pika populations become more and more isolated to individual mountain ranges. High temperatures in valleys make migrating a death sentence for the animals—in fact, scientists have concluded that the pika will spend its entire life within a half-mile radius.