Hall’s pocket gopher holds one of the narrowest ranges of any mammal in this set, restricted almost entirely to the central High Plains of Colorado and Kansas. Colorado carries the bulk of what’s known about the species overall, with roughly 85 range-wide records against 18 logged in Kansas, so the state represents a real but smaller share of a genuinely rare, specialized animal.
Sightings mean fresh burrow mounds, not the gopher itself, since like other pocket gophers it almost never comes above ground. All 18 of the state’s records fall in just two months, with 16 in July alone, a spike that most likely reflects one concentrated survey rather than a true midsummer peak in digging. Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, Cheyenne Bottoms, and Cimarron National Grassland span different soil types across the state, any of which could support the species even without more records on file to confirm it.
Full species profile
