Washington’s Preble’s shrew file is a dozen records split between two ends of the state that couldn’t look less alike. Garfield County, in the dry canyon country of the southeast, holds 6. Jefferson County, on the rain-soaked Olympic Peninsula, holds 5. Spokane County adds 1. For a shrew known as a sagebrush-country specialist, the Olympic cluster is the surprise.
Two Washingtons, one shrew
East of the Cascades, the Garfield and Spokane records fit the textbook: cool, moist pockets tucked inside an arid landscape, streamside willow and deep grass set in dry hills. The Jefferson County records, in and around Olympic National Park, put the shrew in some of the wettest country in the Lower 48, which suggests its real requirement is simply damp ground cover, whatever the surrounding climate. The suggested coastal refuges, Dungeness and Willapa among them, extend that idea down the shore.
A late-summer trickle
Washington’s few records bunch into summer and early fall, with September leading at 5. A three-gram shrew almost never enters the record except through a biological survey, so the timing reflects when crews trap, not when the animal stirs. Shrews stay active all winter, eating almost constantly just to keep such a small body warm.
Status in Washington
NatureServe ranks the species S1, critically imperiled, in Washington, at the northwestern corner of its range. Native and rarely encountered, it sits in that uneasy category of animals too small and too seldom trapped for anyone to say confidently whether it’s declining or simply unlooked-for. Twelve records can’t settle that question. The next one will help.
Full species profile
