Nebraska’s porcupine record gathers where the Sandhills meet the river breaks. Of 86 records, Sioux and Cherry counties lead, with Garden, Brown, and Scotts Bluff counties close behind, a western and north-central map stitched from pine plantings, wooded canyons, and cottonwood river corridors.
A rodent that lives half its life in trees
The porcupine is North America’s second-largest rodent after the beaver, a slow, deliberate climber that feeds on buds, leaves, and twigs through the growing season and switches to bark and evergreen needles in winter. Its quills, some 30,000 of them, let it feed unhurried where quicker animals could not. The ponderosa plantations of Nebraska National Forest and Samuel R. McKelvie National Forest, the wooded canyon of the Niobrara National Scenic River, and the Sandhills around Crescent Lake National Wildlife Refuge all hold the trees this animal needs.
Out in all weather
Porcupines do not hibernate. They hole up in rock piles, hollow trees, or dense conifers during the coldest stretches, then return to their feeding trees, where winter bark-chewing leaves patches of bare wood that give them away. Nebraska’s counts build through spring to a June crest, when fresh foliage draws them into the open crowns and the young, born in late spring, are already climbing.
Status in Nebraska
The porcupine is native to Nebraska, and USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous in the state. It carries no species-specific listing under Nebraska’s state-level conservation framework, and the IUCN ranks it Least Concern globally.
Full species profile
