Few Michigan mammals are as thoroughly recorded as the raccoon. Its 2,855 records reach nearly every county in the state, from the farm woodlots and lake suburbs of Washtenaw, Oakland, and Kent counties in the southern Lower Peninsula north to Cheboygan at the Straits, with records at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, the University of Michigan Biological Station, and Pinckney Recreation Area in between.
An omnivore that stays close to water
A raccoon is built for life at the water’s edge. Its sensitive forepaws work over crayfish, frogs, clams, and anything edible along a shoreline, and it dens in hollow trees, so it thrives wherever Michigan’s lakes, rivers, and marshes sit near woods or settlement. Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge’s marshes and Waterloo State Recreation Area’s kettle lakes are exactly that kind of country, and the same mixed cover runs through the southern counties where most records fall.
Restless through winter, not asleep
Raccoons do not truly hibernate. In hard cold they hole up in a den for days or weeks and live off stored fat, then venture out again during any mild stretch. Michigan’s counts reflect that, dipping in December and January without ever stopping, then climbing steeply from April through June as litters leave the den and nights warm.
Status in Michigan
NatureServe ranks the raccoon S5, Secure, in Michigan, and the species is native throughout the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
