The San Bernardino kangaroo rat is one of 19 recognized subspecies of Merriam’s kangaroo rat, which was historically distributed from the San Bernardino Valley in San Bernardino County, California, to the Menifee Valley in Riverside County, California. The San Bernardino kangaroo rat inhabits scattered, isolated patches of alluvial sage-scrub. Present day populations of this species are limited to three disjunct areas in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, which contain the largest remaining areas of suitable habitat for this species. Those include the historical floodplain along the upper Santa Ana River wash, Lytle and Cajon washes and the San Jacinto River. It was listed as endangered in 1998, and the ongoing threats to the species are habitat loss, fragmentation and degradation, as well as alterations of natural hydrological processes and  climate change climate change
Climate change includes both global warming driven by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases and the resulting large-scale shifts in weather patterns. Though there have been previous periods of climatic change, since the mid-20th century humans have had an unprecedented impact on Earth's climate system and caused change on a global scale.

Learn more about climate change .