The southern red-backed vole is a small mammal in Colorado. Open occurrence databases hold 1,210 records for it here, almost all drawn from museum specimens and survey trapping rather than field photographs.
A vole of cool, damp forest
This is a creature of high, moist conifer country rather than the open valleys. It favors spruce-fir and mixed montane forest where fallen logs are draped in moss, the ground stays damp, and streams thread the timber. Most Colorado records come from the northern Front Range and the central mountains, with Boulder County far ahead of anywhere else and scattered detections through Pitkin, Gunnison, Grand, and Eagle counties wherever that cool, mesic forest recurs. It runs shallow tunnels under logs and root tangles, feeding on fungi, green plants, seeds, and berries.
Active all year, rarely seen
Red-backed voles do not hibernate. Through the deep-snow months they stay busy in the insulated space between snowpack and ground, tunneling and feeding out of sight, which is why the observation record thins in winter and swells in the warm months when live-trapping surveys are underway. The seasonal shape reflects when biologists are in the field, not when the animal is present, because it is present the whole year.
Secure in Colorado
NatureServe ranks the southern red-backed vole S5, secure, in Colorado and G5 globally, and the IUCN lists it as least concern. It is native here and in no conservation trouble. It is simply small, nocturnal, and hidden in habitat few casual observers walk through, so a common animal leaves a modest, specimen-led footprint.
Full species profile
