South Dakota is good Franklin’s ground squirrel country, and it’s one of the few states where the records and the status agree. NatureServe ranks the species Secure (S5) here, a striking contrast with the Imperiled and Critically Imperiled grades it carries farther down its range. The difference is habitat: the state’s northeast still holds broad prairie pothole country, wetlands ringed with tall grass.
The records land exactly there. Brown and Marshall counties, the Sand Lake and Waubay refuge country, account for most of the state’s 35 reports, with Day and Codington counties extending the cluster. Fort Sisseton, with four records, is the most-recorded named place. This is the glaciated prairie the squirrel evolved with, and it shows.
Reports crest sharply in June, when the grass is up, squirrels are raising young, and anyone walking pothole edges has a fair chance of a look. The record thins to nearly nothing after September, matching a hibernation that swallows most of the year. Even in a stronghold state, the records-not-abundance rule holds: these counts say where people walked and reported, but for once the habitat behind them supports an optimistic reading.
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