Utah’s 599 porcupine records come from wooded pockets scattered across a mostly treeless map. Antelope Island State Park holds by far the largest cluster, while the Wasatch and Cache national forests, the canyon bottoms of Zion National Park, and the monument country of the south supply a long tail of sightings. Davis and Salt Lake counties lead the count.
A slow bark-eater that needs no speed
The porcupine is North America’s second-largest rodent, and it survives by refusing to hurry. Tens of thousands of barbed quills guard a waddling, flat-footed animal that climbs readily and feeds in trees, stripping inner bark in winter and shifting to buds, leaves, and herbs in summer. Den sites in rock crevices, hollow logs, and brush piles anchor its home range, and the same mix of trees and rocky cover links Antelope Island’s groves with the conifer forests of the Wasatch and the cottonwood canyons of Zion.
Out all winter
Porcupines do not hibernate. They den up only in the worst weather and otherwise feed through the cold months, often working the same tree for days at a time. That habit explains a record that holds high through winter and crests in January and April, when leafless branches expose a feeding porcupine and bark stripping marks its trees.
Status in Utah
The North American porcupine is native to Utah, and USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous in the state. It is not specifically listed under Utah’s state-level conservation framework, and the IUCN lists it globally as Least Concern.
Full species profile
