Washington’s Columbian ground squirrel record is an east-side story, but not the mountain story the park list suggests. Walla Walla County leads the state with 272 of 942 records since 2000, and Whitman County adds 138, both of them Palouse prairie rather than alpine country. The mountain counties do show up, Pend Oreille at 103, Okanogan at 99, Spokane at 82, with the Colville National Forest, Mount Spokane, and the Pasayten Wilderness among the named places, but the heart of the Washington record is open, dry grassland east of the Cascades. Nothing reaches the west side.
Reports climb from a March and April emergence to a May-through-July peak, then fall off hard after August as the squirrels return to their burrows for a hibernation that lasts most of the year. NatureServe ranks the species secure in the state, and 19 counties with records back that reading. As always with counts like these, the pattern shows where people have looked and logged, so empty counties are question marks, not verdicts.
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