Louisiana carries 698 documented muskrat records, most of them GBIF entries rather than photographs, clustered around Fontainebleau State Park, Sabine National Wildlife Refuge, and Grand Isle.
Coastal marsh that once fed a fur economy
Sabine National Wildlife Refuge sits in the brackish marsh of the state’s southwest coast, 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. Fontainebleau State Park’s bayous draining into Lake Pontchartrain and Grand Isle’s marsh fringe round out the same coastal habitat picture.
Records bunch up in late winter
Louisiana’s records spike sharply in February, a pattern that likely reflects the timing of historic trapping-season surveys concentrated in that month rather than 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
