Northern pocket gophers range across most of the interior West, and New Mexico sits near the southern tip of that range, in the high country around Bandelier National Monument, Valles Caldera National Preserve, and the Jemez Mountains. Like other pocket gophers, they spend nearly all their time underground, so a record here typically means a fresh mound or a trapping survey, not a sighting of the animal itself.
The 844 New Mexico records are heavily concentrated in summer, peaking hard in August, with July and June also well above the yearly average; February shows almost nothing. In NatureServe’s state ranking the species sits at S4, Apparently Secure, and the high mountain meadows and forest openings here are about as far south and high as this typically lower-elevation species holds on.
Full species profile
