Oregon’s American red squirrel records number just over 600, and nearly all of the named locations behind them sit in one corner of the state: the conifer forests of the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest and the Wallowa Mountains in the far northeast.
A Blue Mountains specialist
Western Oregon’s conifer forests belong mostly to the Douglas squirrel, a close relative that fills the same cone-caching role from the Coast Range through the Cascades. The American red squirrel’s Oregon foothold sits instead in the drier, higher forests of the Blue and Wallowa ranges, spruce, fir, and lodgepole stands that connect the state’s far northeast corner to the species’ much larger range across the Rockies and the boreal forests of Canada.
Middens mark a mapped territory
A red squirrel spends much of the year building a midden, a mounded pile of stripped conifer cone scales that can grow for years around a favorite feeding perch, and it defends the ground around that pile with a loud, rattling call. In the high country near the Wallowas, that call is often the first sign a hiker gets that one is nearby, well before the squirrel itself comes into view. Reports here turn up in every month, but climb sharply from July through September, which likely tracks when people are hiking the high Wallowas as much as anything about the squirrel’s own habits.
Status in Oregon
NatureServe ranks the American red squirrel S4, apparently secure, in Oregon, and it’s native to the state. Its narrow foothold in the northeast corner makes it one of the more location-specific mammals in this atlas, tied tightly to one mountain system rather than spread across the state.
Full species profile
