Franklin’s ground squirrel is about as rare as it gets in Illinois. NatureServe lists it S1, Critically Imperiled, the state’s most serious rarity rank, even though the species is secure across its core Great Plains range in Minnesota, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. Illinois sits at the southeastern edge of where this squirrel lives at all.
The 47 Illinois records collected so far cluster around Emiquon and the Illinois River wetlands, central Illinois state parks, and wooded stream corridors, places with the tall grass and brushy cover this squirrel needs to hide in. Unlike the open-country squirrels people picture, this one spends most of its life screened by vegetation, whistling once and vanishing before anyone gets a good look.
May stands out as the busiest reporting month, with August a distant second, and several months carry no records at all. That gap probably says more about how hard this species is to spot, since it’s underground for much of the year, than about when it’s actually active. A record here or there doesn’t prove much on its own, but taken together they mark a genuinely scarce Illinois animal.
Full species profile
