Utah records place Abert’s squirrels in the ponderosa pine country of the Manti–La Sal National Forest, near the northern edge of a southwestern range. This squirrel is unusually tied to ponderosa: it eats the tree’s seeds, buds, inner bark, and fungi associated with its roots, and it often builds bulky twig nests high in the same trees.
May leads the 40-record calendar, when squirrels are active above ground and forest access improves. That timing describes submitted encounters, not numbers of squirrels. Utah’s isolated ponderosa stands can also separate local records sharply from the better-known populations farther south in Arizona and New Mexico.
Utah’s population also carries a tighter NatureServe rank, S2 (imperiled), than the species holds range-wide, a reflection of how isolated the state’s ponderosa pockets are from the larger populations centered in Arizona and New Mexico.
Full species profile
