The montane vole is a common but seldom-seen resident of Colorado’s high meadows. Open occurrence databases hold 1,333 records for it here, most of them from trapping surveys and museum collections rather than photographs, which is the norm for a small grass-dwelling rodent.
Grass, water, and the high valleys
A montane vole needs damp, grassy ground: wet mountain meadows, streamside sedge, and lush subalpine parks. That habitat is scattered through the high country, so records come from mountain valleys across the state, led by Gunnison, Montezuma, and Boulder counties and reaching into the northwestern parks of Moffat and Routt. Where the grass grows thick and the soil stays moist, colonies can be dense even though the animals themselves stay out of sight.
Runways under the grass
The vole spends its life in a network of clipped runways threaded through dense vegetation, mowing green stems and grass and stashing cuttings for later. Populations swell and crash in multi-year cycles, and in a peak year the meadows can teem with them, feeding hawks, weasels, foxes, and owls in turn. They stay active right through winter, tunneling beneath the snow, so the summer bulge in the record marks when biologists are afield, not when the vole is awake.
Status in Colorado
NatureServe ranks the montane vole S5, secure, in Colorado. It is frequently recorded in the state’s wet mountain meadows, even if most people never lay eyes on one.
Full species profile
