North Carolina’s 685 fox squirrel records draw a map of the state’s pine country. The strongest clusters sit in New Hanover, Brunswick, and Moore counties, around Carolina Beach State Park, Weymouth Woods Sandhills Nature Preserve, and Brunswick Town State Historic Site, with more from Croatan National Forest on the coast and Uwharrie National Forest in the Piedmont.
The biggest tree squirrel, feeding on open ground
The fox squirrel is the largest tree squirrel in North America, and it lives differently from the familiar gray squirrel. Where grays work dense hardwood canopy, fox squirrels favor open, parklike pine stands, spending long stretches on the ground digging up buried pine seeds and acorns and traveling between widely spaced trunks. Their size and ground habits make them conspicuous wherever the understory stays open and sunny.
Tied to the longleaf landscape
That preference binds the species to the Sandhills and the coastal longleaf pine belt, where frequent fire keeps the understory open. As fire-maintained pinelands shrank across the Southeast, fox squirrel country shrank with them, and North Carolina’s remaining strongholds read like a roll of protected savannas, from Weymouth Woods to Croatan National Forest and the pine flats near Brunswick Town.
Status in North Carolina
NatureServe ranks the fox squirrel S3, Vulnerable, in North Carolina, even though the species is secure rangewide at G5. It is native to the state, and USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
