Wyoming suits the American badger about as well as any state in the West. The 507 records spread across 21 counties, with Yellowstone National Park alone contributing 209 and Park, Albany, and Teton counties leading the county list, a map of sagebrush basins, high grassland, and open valley floors with soil a badger can work.
A digger built for open country
A badger’s front half is a digging machine, broad shoulders, powerful forelimbs, and long claws for excavating ground squirrels, pocket gophers, and prairie dogs straight from their burrows. That hunting style ties it to open ground with deep, workable soils, which Wyoming’s basins and plains supply almost everywhere outside the high mountains. Grand Teton National Park, Fossil Butte National Monument, and the Red Rim-Grizzly Wildlife Habitat Management Area all hold records along that open-country band.
Quiet months, not a winter disappearance
Badgers do not truly hibernate, but in severe cold they den up for days at a stretch and let their body temperature sag, so a midwinter badger is rarely abroad. Wyoming’s counts thin sharply from November through March, then climb to a June peak, when warming soil is easy to work and females are provisioning growing young in the den.
Status in Wyoming
NatureServe ranks the American badger S5, Secure, in Wyoming, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
