Idaho’s occurrence databases hold 1,278 red squirrel records, the sixth-highest total among the 80 mammals tracked in this batch. That’s a measure of how often the species gets logged in conifer forest, not a direct count of how many squirrels are out there.
Conifer country from the Panhandle to the Sawtooths
Red squirrel records follow Idaho’s conifer forest wherever it grows tall and cone-heavy: the cedar, hemlock, and white pine stands of the Idaho Panhandle, the mixed conifer canyons of the Nez Perce-Clearwater, and the lodgepole and subalpine fir forests of the Sawtooths and Caribou-Targhee National Forest. Scattered records even turn up in the forested pine stands within the lava fields of Craters of the Moon National Monument, wherever enough cone-bearing trees survive to support a territory.
A hoarder that never sleeps through winter
Unlike a ground squirrel, the red squirrel doesn’t hibernate. It spends late summer and fall clipping green cones by the hundreds and piling them into a midden, a mounded cache of cone scales it returns to all winter. Each squirrel defends that midden and the timber around it with loud, sustained chatter, since losing the cache to a rival means going hungry once snow closes off the ground.
Records track the cone harvest
Idaho’s monthly reports build through summer and peak from July through September, right when the year’s cone crop ripens and squirrels are working hardest, and most visibly, to bring it in. Reports fall off fast once the harvest ends and the animal retreats to its midden under snow, though it stays active underneath all winter.
Status in Idaho
NatureServe ranks the red squirrel S4, Apparently Secure, in Idaho, and it’s native to the state’s conifer forests. Its record count tracks the extent of mature cone-bearing timber more than anything else, so a healthy tally here says more about healthy forest than about how many squirrels are out there.
Full species profile
