Arkansas’s eastern harvest mouse records pile up in one narrow corridor: Sebastian and Franklin counties, along the Arkansas River valley in the state’s west. Ten of the 15 records sit in Sebastian County alone. That’s a striking concentration for a mouse that should suit grassy cover statewide, and it says more about where small-mammal surveys have run than about where the mouse actually lives.
Notice what doesn’t appear. The big Delta refuges in eastern Arkansas, White River, Big Lake, and Wapanocca, hold exactly the tall, rank grass this mouse loves, yet the records come from the other end of the state. Gaps like that are an invitation, not a verdict. Absence of records is never evidence of absence, especially for a secretive grassland rodent that nobody finds without traps.
Reports peak in June and July with a smaller April rise, fitting both peak grass growth and the summer field season. NatureServe ranks the species Imperiled (S2) in Arkansas, a status rooted in how little of the state’s native prairie and old-field grassland remains. Every new record from a fresh county would meaningfully redraw what’s known of its Arkansas range.
Full species profile
