Wyoming holds one of the stronger dwarf shrew records in the northern Rockies: 47 reports since 2000, spread across nine counties. They cluster where the mountains are. Lincoln and Park counties in the west account for more than half, with Albany County in the southeast adding most of the rest. That montane pattern fits a shrew of cool, moist forest floor and meadow edges.
The calendar tells its own story. Reports build through June and crest from July through September, when the high country is snow-free and small-mammal surveys are running. Dwarf shrews weigh only a few grams and live under leaf litter and logs, so nobody finds them by accident. A record almost always means somebody set traps, which is why these counts map effort as much as animal.
NatureServe ranks the species Apparently Secure (S4) in Wyoming, a notch better than its Imperiled standing just across the line in Montana. The difference probably says less about the shrew than about how much montane habitat Wyoming holds and how hard it’s been worked. Either way, each new record sharpens a range map that’s still being drawn.
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