Alaska records for the northern red-backed vole cluster most heavily around Denali National Park and Preserve, with a second concentration in the coastal terrain of Kenai Fjords National Park and the lowlands of the Matanuska-Susitna Valley. That spread tracks the vole’s real range in the state: spruce forest floor and mossy rock outcrops from the Interior’s boreal taiga down to the rocky coastal mountains near the Kenai Fjords.
A rust-red stripe running down the back is the field mark to look for, and it holds up across this whole range, from Denali’s shrub tundra and rocky scree to the wetter forest edges near Katmai and Lake Clark. Rather than digging burrows, this vole shelters under logs, root tangles, and boulder piles, and it eats lingonberry, bog bilberry, seeds, and fungi. American ermine are recorded predators, small enough to follow a vole into its own runways among the rocks.
Records peak sharply in July and August, when Alaska’s near-continuous summer daylight keeps the vole active around the clock and puts more observers out on the same trails. That’s the busiest window for people watching, not necessarily the only time it’s out; sightings fall off fast once the ground starts to freeze.
This is one of the most frequently recorded small mammals in the state’s occurrence data, but a high record count reflects where people have looked as much as where the vole actually lives.
Full species profile
