Following the training, participants select one or more site(s) to survey between early July and mid-September. Each monitoring site is in the beautiful Colorado Rockies, but the difficulty of each hike varies enormously. Some spots require many miles of off-trail bushwhacking, whereas others are less than a hundred feet from a paved road. Most sites are near to a trail and involve a few miles of hiking.

Volunteers are expected to look through the provided resources and do some independent learning to decide which site(s) would be best for them. Once a volunteer has arrived at a given site, they search for sign of pikas and then record data on pika presence, habitat characteristics, and the weather. The average amount of time to survey a site is around one hour.

A pika survey requires navigating to remote field sites and walking on talus and other variable terrain at high altitudes for extended periods. For safety, we ask that you hike with a partner who is also capable of navigating in the backcountry (your partner does not have to be a CPP volunteer). Minors must be at least 12 years of age and accompanied by a parent or guardian.

 

We are recruiting new volunteers to conduct surveys for two research initiatives, one in Rocky Mountain National Park, and one in the White River National Forest.

Check out the maps shown on the linked RMNP & WRNF Resource pages to see the locations of our monitoring sites this year!

Note that we are not accepting new volunteers to conduct surveys at the long-term monitoring sites in our Front Range project this year.

  

Scheduling your surveys is up to you. Surveys must take place when there is no snow on the talus, which is typically from early July into October (depending on the elevation of your site). We ask that you sign up to survey a site and notify us if your plans change.

  

While we will not require attendees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, we strongly encourage it. If you are sick or have tested positive for COVID-19 within 10 days of the training session, we ask that you do not attend.

We will keep everyone who has RSVPed informed about any changes to our COVID-19 protocol or if we must cancel the training session due to COVID-19.

  

There is no minimum age for attending a field training and we have had volunteers who feel comfortable hiking with their toddlers visit pika monitoring locations with them. As well, we have a number of volunteers who survey pika sites as a family activity.

It is up to you whether or not you feel comfortable bringing your child (or a minor who you’re the guardian of) with you for pika monitoring. If you do, then you must fill out our Minor Volunteer Waiver and either submit it to us at a Field Training or through this form  before you and your child can volunteer.

We request that any volunteer who is collecting data be at least 15 years old. That means that kids under the age of 15 can look for pika sign, but their data should not end up on a datasheet. This doesn’t apply to using the Pika Patrol app! 

We use two different data collection methods in the Colorado Pika Project. 

One of these methods is used in our Front Range project, which we’ve been coordinating since 2010. This protocol is relatively simple and almost all the sites are located in Colorado’s Front Range.

The other method was developed by the National Park Service and we use it in our White River National Forest (WRNF) and Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) projects. We call this our Public Lands Protocol and while it is more complicated that the Front Range Protocol, the data is more powerful.

Because the PL protocol is more complicated than the FR protocol, volunteers who are trained in the latter can’t collect data at the RMNP and WRNF sites. We have made exceptions for PL volunteers visiting FR sites, but there are no exceptions going the other way.

Confusingly, some of the Front Range sites are located in Rocky Mountain National Park. On  this map, black marks Front Range sites, while sites marked with red and blue require training in the Public Lands protocol.