The eastern mole is a mammal in Colorado. Open occurrence databases hold just 23 Colorado records, only 3 of them photographs, which fits an animal that spends nearly its entire life below the surface and is ranked Imperiled at the western edge of its range.
The only mole on the eastern plains
Colorado has just one true mole, and it barely reaches the state. The eastern mole is an animal of the deeper, richer soils of the central and eastern United States, and it slips into Colorado only along the far eastern High Plains near the Kansas and Nebraska line. Yuma County holds the overwhelming majority of records, with a few scattered west into Washington and Logan counties. The distribution is dictated by dirt: the mole needs the moist, workable prairie loam that supports earthworms and grubs, and Colorado’s drier, sandier, rockier ground farther west simply will not hold it.
A life spent underground
This is not a shy animal so much as an invisible one. Built to dig, with paddle-like forefeet and reduced eyes, the eastern mole tunnels constantly in pursuit of earthworms and soil insects and almost never comes to the surface. Most people who share ground with one never see the mole at all, only the raised ridges and low mounds it pushes up as it works. A photograph usually means a dead or displaced animal, which is why the visual record is nearly empty.
Effort, not activity
The scattered, thin calendar of records reflects when someone happened to dig one up or a survey passed through, not any real seasonal rhythm. The mole is active year-round in its tunnels, and its true timing in Colorado stays undocumented. What the sparse record establishes is simply that this eastern species holds a genuine, if narrow, foothold on Colorado’s northeastern plains.
Full species profile
