Illinois sits at the edge of the eastern woodrat’s range, and the records show it. Only 24 reports have been logged here, mostly from Cache River State Natural Area, Chautauqua National Wildlife Refuge, and the bluffs and backwaters along the Upper Mississippi River refuge lands. That thin count puts it in the state’s “rare” bucket, in the bottom fifth of Illinois mammals by record count.
This isn’t a house rat with a bad reputation. It’s a native, mostly plant-eating rodent that builds stick-and-leaf houses tucked into rock crevices, log piles, and dense brush. NatureServe ranks it S2, Imperiled, in Illinois, a step down from its secure standing across the rest of its Midwest and southeastern range.
December carries the most reports in the Illinois data, ten of the 24 total, though five months have no reports logged at all. That doesn’t mean the species disappears in spring; it just means the record is thin, shaped more by who was out looking than by the animal’s true rhythm through the year.
Full species profile
