South Dakota’s pygmy shrew file is a puzzle. NatureServe tags the species SH in the state, possibly extirpated, meaning it’s known here only from historical records. Yet the report ledger isn’t empty: a couple dozen records exist, concentrated in the glaciated northeast corner, with Marshall County accounting for half of them and Day County adding a few more.
That northeast corner is lake-and-marsh country, a wetter, cooler landscape than most of the state, and it’s the plausible edge of the shrew’s range spilling down from the north. Whether a breeding population persists there, or whether the records mark a species that has slipped away, is exactly the kind of question the SH rank flags. Museum specimens and old survey captures make up most of the trail.
The calendar leans hard into fall, with September and October accounting for most reports. That’s classic small-mammal survey season, when trappers work before freeze-up and young shrews are dispersing, so the timing says as much about method as about the animal. Until someone runs fresh surveys in the northeast marshes, South Dakota’s pygmy shrew stays a maybe: present on paper, unconfirmed on the ground.
Full species profile
