Nebraska’s prairie shrew record belongs to the Sandhills. Lincoln, Logan, and Cherry counties lead the state’s 96 reports, and that cluster is no accident. The Sandhills hold the largest expanse of grass-covered dunes on the continent. It’s big open grassland, with wet meadow bottoms threaded between the hills. That’s the closest thing the species has to unlimited habitat in the state, and the record shows it.
The seasonal quirk here is a December crest, 28 reports in the year’s final month, with a smaller rise in May. Shrews don’t hibernate, so winter captures are real animals. The December bulge most likely marks late-season trapping, not any movement of the shrews themselves. NatureServe considers the species apparently secure in Nebraska. The breadth of the record supports that: 22 counties have at least one report, from the Sandhills east to the Missouri. It’s a quiet, widespread presence that only patient survey work reveals.
Full species profile
