Utah’s silky pocket mouse records cluster around Bears Ears National Monument, Book Cliffs, and Capitol Reef National Park, canyon and high-desert country with the sandy, loose soil this tiny rodent needs to dig and forage. Its cheek pouches let it carry seeds back to a burrow without ever getting them wet, useful in country this dry.
All 108 Utah records come from GBIF, with a sharp spike in August, 65 sightings that dwarfs every other month, most likely a single well-surveyed season rather than a true late-summer surge, since this mouse is active at night when it’s harder to spot generally. That puts it in the occasional bracket, near the state’s midpoint for record volume.
NatureServe ranks the silky pocket mouse S3, Vulnerable, in Utah, a reminder that even a widespread species can hold thin ground in any one state.
Full species profile
