Minnesota’s plains pocket mouse file is nearly empty: since 2000, open databases hold a single record, a July 2015 sighting from Clay County in the Red River Valley. One record can’t show a pattern of place or season. It mostly confirms the mouse was still in the state that summer.
A sand-plain outpost at the range’s northeast corner
Minnesota sits at the very northeast edge of this species’ range. Older specimen records, outside the 2000 to 2026 window and not counted here, come mostly from Sherburne County on the Anoka Sand Plain, a broad stretch of sandy glacial outwash along the Mississippi and St. Francis rivers. A burrowing mouse that needs loose, dry soil would find little to work with in the state’s farm country or north woods, but this sand plain suits it. The lone recent record from Clay County, far to the northwest, hints that the real footprint could run wider than the surveys have shown.
A decade of silence
No verified Minnesota record has landed since 2015, and NatureServe ranks the species S3, vulnerable, in the state. A gap like that doesn’t prove the mouse is gone; a nocturnal animal on a little-visited sand plain can slip past a decade of casual eyes. It does mean any fresh, documented sighting from Minnesota would carry real weight.
Full species profile
