A cinereus shrew’s non-stop hunting keeps it buried in leaf litter and soil far more than in front of a camera, and New Mexico’s record shows it: every one of the state’s 321 logged sightings comes from a GBIF specimen survey, not a single iNaturalist photo.
NatureServe ranks the species S2, Imperiled, in New Mexico, a sharper concern than its globally secure status elsewhere suggests. The state sits near the southern edge of a shrew whose main range runs from Alaska through the northern Rockies, and edge populations like this one tend to be thinner and harder to find.
Records cluster around Kiowa National Grassland, Capulin Volcano National Monument, and Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge, with reports rising sharply from August through October, most likely reflecting when trapping surveys run rather than a true seasonal peak.
Full species profile
