Two corners of Montana hold nearly all of the state’s northern bog lemming records. Flathead and Lincoln counties, the Glacier National Park and Kootenai country of the northwest, account for 27 of 39 reports, with Glacier itself the most reported single place. Beaverhead County, far to the southwest along the Idaho line, adds five, a second pocket in the high, wet valleys around Red Rock Lakes.
Reports run from May through September and crest in July and August, the brief season when mountain bogs and wet meadows are free of snow and trappers can reach them. Like its relatives, this lemming stays active year-round beneath the snow, so the summer pile-up is about access, not activity.
Neither cluster should be read as the species’ real Montana center. Bog lemmings are erratic in traps and scarce in samples everywhere, and the state’s vast unsampled wet meadows could hide plenty of them.
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