Utah’s muskrat records hug the Wasatch Front. Salt Lake County leads with 189, Davis County follows with 172, and Utah County adds 123, the string of cities squeezed between the mountains and the big lakes. That’s where most Utahns live, and it’s also where runoff-fed marshes spread along the shores of the Great Salt Lake and Utah Lake. Farmington Bay, a state wildlife area on the Great Salt Lake’s east shore, is among the named places.
Water in dry country
Away from the Front, records follow water wherever it surfaces. Juab County in the west desert holds 11, and Garfield and Washington counties in the south add 9 each, where spring-fed wetlands, reservoirs, and irrigation ditches give muskrats a foothold. Box Elder and Cache counties to the north take in the Bear River marshes and valley farmland. Uinta National Forest leads the named places, likely from reservoirs and stream edges below the peaks, and Jordanelle State Park’s reservoir appears too.
Nearly all of Utah’s 789 records, 782 of them, come from iNaturalist. Reports build from February to a high in April and May, ease through summer, and stay low from September through January.
NatureServe ranks the muskrat S4, apparently secure, in Utah, where it’s native.
Full species profile
