Everything about the Olympic shrew’s Washington record points to a species known mainly from museum trays. Of 233 state records, all but one come through specimen collections rather than photographs. The most recent observation in the set dates to July 2004. That doesn’t mean the shrew has vanished. It means almost nobody goes looking for a mouse-sized hunter that lives in wet forest litter and along stream edges.
The records that do exist draw a consistent picture. Pacific County leads with 84, followed by Clallam and Grays Harbor. That is a coastal strip from the Long Beach Peninsula north through the Olympic lowlands. A scatter reaches inland to Mount Rainier, with one outlier east in Pend Oreille County. July produced the most dated reports, with a smaller September rise. That timing reflects when small-mammal trappers work, not any season in the shrew’s life; shrews stay active all year. NatureServe hasn’t given the species a Washington rank. A file this thin and this old deserves fresh attention.
Full species profile
