The Pacific shrew’s Oregon record is a coastal story. Lane, Douglas, Tillamook, and Lincoln counties, a nearly unbroken run of Coast Range and shoreline, account for the great bulk of more than seventeen hundred mapped reports, and the Siuslaw National Forest leads all named sites. East of the Cascades the record nearly vanishes, with a couple of reports in Deschutes County and little else. For Oregon’s largest shrew, damp coastal forest floor is close to the whole world.
Reports arrive in every month and pile up from midsummer through fall, with August through October the heaviest stretch. Shrews don’t hibernate, so part of that arc is the animal’s own busy season and part is the simple fact that warm months bring more people, more traps, and more upturned logs.
NatureServe ranks the shrew S3, vulnerable in Oregon, though the species is secure across its full range. That caution reflects how tightly it’s tied to mature, moist coastal forest, a habitat that has steadily shrunk. The record’s depth in the Coast Range shows both where the shrew still thrives and what’s riding on those forests.
Full species profile
