Virginia holds just 85 records of the American red squirrel, the thinnest count of any tree squirrel in the state’s occurrence data, and nearly all of them come from one small corner of the map. The George Washington and Jefferson National Forests account for most reports, with a handful more from Grayson Highlands State Park and the high Blue Ridge around Mount Rogers.
A northern squirrel stranded on the highest peaks
Red squirrels are built for cold conifer forest, the spruce and fir belt that runs from Canada down through the high Appalachians. Virginia’s mountains are too warm and too low for that habitat almost everywhere, except at the very top of the Blue Ridge near Grayson Highlands and Mount Rogers, where a small patch of red spruce and Fraser fir survives as a leftover from a much colder climate. That sliver of high-elevation forest is close to the whole Virginia range for this species, which is why the record count stays so thin.
A cache of cones for the lean months
Where it does occur, a red squirrel spends much of the year building a midden, a stockpile of conifer cones stashed in one spot and defended against other squirrels. It draws on that cache for seeds through fall and winter, switching to fungi, buds, and the occasional bird egg when cones run short. That caching habit is a big reason the species can hold on in a patch of forest as small as Virginia’s spruce-fir peaks.
Status in Virginia
NatureServe ranks the American red squirrel S5, secure, and Virginia doesn’t list it as nonindigenous. It’s native here, but only at the edge of its range, holding on to the coldest ground the state has left.
Full species profile
