Louisiana carries 14 documented muskrat records since 2000, every one an iNaturalist observation, and half of them come from Cameron Parish on the southwest coast.
Coastal marsh that once fed a fur economy
Cameron Parish takes in the brackish marsh of the state’s southwest coast, including Sabine National Wildlife Refuge, exactly the kind of cattail and sedge wetland a muskrat needs to build lodges and feed. Louisiana’s coastal marshes were once among the continent’s top muskrat fur-trapping grounds, though nutria, a much larger invasive rodent brought in during the 1930s, have muscled into the same marsh and are blamed for much of the muskrat’s decline along the coast since. Single records from Fontainebleau State Park, on bayous draining into Lake Pontchartrain, and from Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge in eastern New Orleans round out the same coastal habitat picture.
Too few records for a seasonal peak
Louisiana’s 14 records spread across most of the year, with a high of just 3 in April and none in June, July, or November, too few to show any true behavioral peak in the animal itself.
Status in Louisiana
NatureServe ranks the muskrat S4, apparently secure, and it’s native to Louisiana. USGS NAS doesn’t list it as nonindigenous, consistent with a species long native to the state’s marshes and bayous.
Full species profile
