The North American porcupine’s Vermont record runs to 1,722 records and tilts inland, away from the lake plain. Orange County leads by a wide margin, with Washington and Windsor counties next, the hardwood ridges and mixed woods along the spine of the Green Mountains and the Connecticut River uplands.
A rodent that winters in the trees
A porcupine eats plants all year, but the menu changes hard with the seasons. Through summer it grazes leaves, clover, and aquatic plants on the ground; through a Vermont winter it lives in the crowns, stripping inner bark from hemlock, beech, and maple, and the gnawed patches it leaves high in a tree are often the only sign of it. Records from Green Mountain National Forest, Bomoseen State Park, and Groton and Okemo state forests fit exactly that kind of mixed conifer and hardwood country.
Spring, when they come down and wander
Reports crest from April through June, when porcupines leave their winter dens in rock ledges and hollow trees to work the fresh green growth at ground level. They move slowly and fear little, which is why spring also brings them to roadsides, drawn by road salt and new grass, and into view.
Status in Vermont
Vermont treats the porcupine as native, and USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous in the state. It is not specifically listed under Vermont’s state-level conservation framework, and the IUCN lists it globally as Least Concern.
Full species profile
