Idaho’s desert woodrat records draw a tidy map of the state’s desert southwest. All 25 come from four counties along the Snake River Plain and the Owyhee country, with Owyhee County alone holding half. This is the northern edge of the Great Basin, and the woodrat reaches the top of its range in Idaho’s lava fields, rimrock, and sagebrush canyons.
The Owyhee River Wilderness, with six records, is the single richest named spot, and Craters of the Moon country fits the species just as well. Desert woodrats are famous for their stick houses, piled into rock crevices and lava tubes, and southern Idaho’s broken basalt gives them exactly that.
Reports climb from May to a July peak, then taper off. Some of that is the animals, most active on warm nights and busy gathering, and some is the people, since summer is when small-mammal surveys run and hikers fill the canyon country. Records mark where looking happened, not a census. NatureServe ranks the species Apparently Secure (S4) in Idaho, and the steady trickle of reports across two decades doesn’t argue against it.
Full species profile
