South Dakota’s occurrence databases hold 530 red squirrel records, most frequently recorded around Custer State Park, Black Hills National Forest, and the cluster of monuments and parks, Mount Rushmore, Jewel Cave, Wind Cave, that share the same forest.
An island of pine surrounded by prairie
Every one of those top sites sits inside the same block of Black Hills ponderosa pine, hundreds of miles from the nearest contiguous conifer forest in the Rockies. That isolation makes this a genuine outpost, dependent on this one pocket of pine rather than a connected range the species can retreat into elsewhere in the state.
Caching cones and defending a patch of timber
American red squirrels live on conifer seed, cutting cones and stashing them in middens they defend loudly against other squirrels. Records peak in April, right as young squirrels born the previous year disperse to claim their own territory and start chattering at intruders, human and squirrel alike, from a stand of pine.
Status in South Dakota
USGS NAS doesn’t list the American red squirrel as nonindigenous in South Dakota, and NatureServe ranks it S5, secure, in the state. It’s native to the Black Hills forest it depends on here.
Full species profile
