North Carolina’s muskrat records center on the Piedmont, not the coast. Wake County leads with 61, and Chatham, Durham, Orange, and Alamance counties add dozens more, the Triangle region around Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill. The top named site is Lower Haw River State Natural Area in Chatham County, where a slow river winds past floodplain sloughs, and research land at NC State and conservation tracts around UNC also appear.
Sounds, mountains, and the western Piedmont
Currituck and Dare counties on the northern Outer Banks rank fourth and sixth, where muskrats use the marshy fringes of the sounds. In the mountains, Buncombe County around Asheville and the Pisgah and Nantahala national forests carry a smaller share from ponds and slow creeks. Catawba and Mecklenburg counties, around Hickory and Charlotte, fill in the western Piedmont. All 405 records come through iNaturalist, so the Triangle’s lead says plenty about its universities and its crowd of naturalists.
Reports jump in March and hold nearly level through May, only easing in June before they drop away in midsummer. December and November are the quietest months. That long spring plateau looks different from the sharp April spike typical farther north. Records come from 63 counties in all.
NatureServe lists the native muskrat as S5, secure, in North Carolina.
Full species profile
