Minnesota’s occurrence databases hold 1,106 records for the southern red-backed vole, all of them logged through GBIF rather than iNaturalist, which fits an animal that’s rarely photographed and mostly turns up in small-mammal trapping surveys. Reports concentrate around Voyageurs National Park and Superior National Forest.
A fungus-eating engine of the northern forest
This vole favors cool, moist conifer and mixed forest with plenty of downed logs and a thick duff layer, exactly the understory that covers much of the Arrowhead’s Superior National Forest and the country around Voyageurs National Park. A large share of its diet is fungi, including the underground truffle-like fungi that attach to conifer roots, and by digging up and eating those fungi the vole spreads their spores through the forest floor, helping the same conifers it lives under form the root partnerships they need to grow.
A record pattern shaped by traps, not tracks
Records rise sharply from July through October and stay low the rest of the year, which lines up less with when the vole is active, it’s active year-round under snow and duff alike, and more with when small-mammal trapping surveys run. A live-trap grid set in late summer will catch far more red-backed voles than a hiker will ever spot in the open.
Status in Minnesota
NatureServe hasn’t assigned Minnesota’s red-backed vole a numeric rank, but it’s native to the state. Its future here tracks the health of the mature, moist conifer forest of the Arrowhead, the same forest that depends on the fungi this small vole helps spread.
Full species profile
