Wisconsin’s prairie vole record is modest: 28 reports since 2000, the most recent from September 2021, spread across eight counties with a clear southern lean. Dane, Rock, and Monroe counties hold most of them, a band of southern Wisconsin where remnant prairies, grassy rail corridors, and old pasture still stitch together into vole-worthy cover.
A southern grassland foothold
The suggested refuges tell the same story from the landscape side. Horicon’s marsh edges, Necedah’s sand country, and the Upper Mississippi refuge bottoms all hold the dense, rank grass this vole colonies need. What’s missing from the map is most of the state’s north and east, where forest and dairy-country hayfields replace the tall turf. Hay gets cut too often for a vole that lives in its own thatch, so the animal’s Wisconsin footprint likely tracks the ground that stays uncut longest.
A September crest
Wisconsin reports peak in September, with a smaller rise in June. That fits how vole colonies run: breeding starts in spring, numbers build through summer, and by early fall the runway systems are at their busiest and most visible. None of it means voles are scarce the rest of the year. They work under the snow all winter, out of sight of anyone but a fox.
Status in Wisconsin
NatureServe ranks the prairie vole S2, imperiled, in Wisconsin, well below its secure global grade. The state sits at the northeast edge of the species’ range, and its native prairie has been shrinking for a century and a half. With the last verified record now a few years old, a fresh, documented observation from Dane, Monroe, or Rock County would help confirm this pair-bonding grassland rodent is still holding its ground.
Full species profile
