Northern pocket gophers spend nearly all their lives underground, so North Dakota’s 131 records lean overwhelmingly on GBIF specimen and trapping data, 130 of them, since actually seeing a gopher above ground is rare even where they’re common. No NatureServe rank appears on file, SNR unranked, despite the species being one of the more record-rich mammals in this rank tier.
June alone accounts for 42 of the year’s monthly-tallied records, more than a third of the total, a sharp spike that plausibly reflects a concentrated trapping survey rather than any real seasonal explosion in gopher activity, since this species doesn’t hibernate and stays active belowground year-round.
Full species profile
