Merriam’s ground squirrel is a bunchgrass and sagebrush specialist of northeastern Oregon, and records concentrate around the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest and the Blue Mountains’ dry, open slopes rather than the wetter forest that dominates the western half of the state. That narrow habitat preference keeps this species largely confined to Oregon’s high desert and canyon country.
NatureServe hasn’t yet assigned the species a numeric state rank in Oregon, listing it SNR, unranked, even though it carries a G3, vulnerable, global rank, a gap that likely reflects limited formal survey work in the remote country where it lives. Like other ground squirrels, it spends much of the year underground in torpor, active mainly through spring and early summer when bunchgrass is green and seed is available.
