Discovery of Santa Cruz kangaroo rat in Sierra Azul Preserve raises hopes for a unique and rare creature.
For decades, an imperiled rodent was thought to exist only in a tiny pocket of sandhills in Henry Cowell State Park in Santa Cruz County – and nowhere else on Earth.
“I was shocked when I found these animals. It was unbelievable,” said Ken Hickman, who detected the elusive subspecies in Sierra Azul Midpeninsula Open Space Preserve, above Los Gatos, using trail cameras. “People have been looking for them for years,” Why does this little creature matter? Kangaroo rats are considered a “keystone species,” integral to maintaining a balanced and thriving ecosystem. Their caches of buried seeds help give rise to a new generation of manzanita plants. Their burrows provide shelter for toads, snakes, and other wildlife.
Since 1900, their range has severely shrunk. Much of the animal’s original habitat has been destroyed or degraded by sand mining operations and residential and commercial development, according to David Lee of San Jose State University and Jodi M. McGraw of The Land Trust of Santa Cruz County. Once contiguous, the Bay Area’s many sandhills have been cut into fragments.
A kangaroo rat hadn’t been seen in that area since 1940. But the Sierra Azul Preserve is the most massive of Midpen’s open space lands, protecting more than 19,000 acres of wilderness — so Hickman sensed it could be potential habitat.“I loaded up my photos and saw all these kangaroo rats,” he said. “I had tears running down my face. It was basically a lightning strike.”
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