Bosque del Apache and Bitter Lake, New Mexico’s two best-known national wildlife refuges, anchor this squirrel’s in-state record alongside the wider Rio Grande corridor. That’s a telling pattern: Arizona gray squirrels need cottonwood riparian forest and sycamore canyons, not the open desert basins that separate those refuges, so the river corridors connecting them are likely where the animals actually persist.
Only 59 records exist for New Mexico, one of the thinner totals among the state’s tree squirrels, and the small monthly bumps in July and December are too sparse to call a real seasonal pattern.
NatureServe ranks the species S2, Imperiled, in New Mexico, a sharper signal than the IUCN’s global Data Deficient listing, which reflects how little is known about the species range-wide rather than how it’s actually faring here.
Full species profile
