The Norway rat isn’t wildlife in the usual sense. It’s a non-native species that arrived with human cargo and now lives wherever people build, and NatureServe flags it as exotic in Missouri without assigning it a conservation rank at all. Its 28 state records, split fairly evenly between iNaturalist and GBIF, likely trace back to buildings, docks, and grain storage near Mingo National Wildlife Refuge, Big Oak Tree State Park, and Swan Lake National Wildlife Refuge rather than open habitat within them.
July produces the sharpest spike in reports, though with so few records year to year that could easily shift. Wherever people notice and report a rat, that’s where a record appears, which says far more about human activity and construction than about how many rats actually live in a given corner of the state.
Full species profile
