The prairie vole is an easily overlooked resident of Colorado’s grasslands. Open occurrence databases hold 593 state records, but only 2 are iNaturalist photos. Nearly everything known about its Colorado range comes from trapping and specimen collections.
A grassland runway-maker
Unlike the burrowing gophers it shares the plains with, the prairie vole lives at the surface, threading a network of clipped runways through dense grass. It holds to the tallgrass and mixed-grass country of the northern Front Range and the eastern plains, concentrated across Larimer, Arapahoe, Weld, and Yuma counties wherever the cover is thick enough to hide its runs. It feeds on grasses, seeds, and roots and stays close to that grass at all times.
Famously faithful
The prairie vole is one of the most-studied small mammals in the world for its social life. Pairs form lasting, monogamous bonds and share the raising of their young, a rarity among rodents that has made this unassuming plains animal a standard model in the science of pair bonding.
Active in every season
Voles do not hibernate. Through winter they stay busy beneath the snow, feeding along runways insulated by the snowpack, so their year-round presence is genuine even where the record thins in the cold months. The summer rise in observations reflects surface activity and survey effort, not arrival. Native to Colorado and ranked secure by NatureServe.
Full species profile
