Pacific shrew records in Alaska sit at the far northern edge of the species’ entire range, barely reaching into the state at all. GBIF lists 88 Alaska records with no research-grade iNaturalist photos to back them up, and every one sits at the outer limit of a range centered hundreds of miles south, along Oregon’s coastal fog belt.
Where this shrew does turn up in the Panhandle, it’s the same damp, mossy coniferous forest and streamside thicket habitat it depends on farther south, the kind of wet, low-elevation ground common to Southeast Alaska’s temperate rainforest near Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. It runs on a nonstop feeding schedule, active by day, dusk, and night in roughly equal measure, and it eats mostly invertebrates with carrion filling in a smaller share.
Alaska’s occurrence record for this species is sparse enough that no clear seasonal pattern shows up in it, unlike the fuller record kept farther south in Oregon. That thinness likely reflects how few surveys have targeted shrews this far north, not the animal’s real presence here.
Full species profile
