New Jersey’s 54 records for the southern red-backed vole don’t go where you might expect. The state’s northwestern highlands, the coolest, most heavily forested ground it has, show only a handful: Morris County with 4, Sussex with 2, and single records at Stokes State Forest and along the Appalachian Trail. Instead, the records pile up in the southern coastal plain. Ocean County leads with 16, Atlantic has 15, Burlington 10, and Camden 6, with Great Egg Harbor River Wildlife Management Area the busiest named site at 4.
Cool shade in the Pinelands
The pattern makes sense once you know the animal. This vole doesn’t need mountains; it needs a cool, moist forest floor, moss, leaf litter, and rotting logs. The Pine Barrens’ cedar swamps and shaded stream corridors deliver exactly that, and they hold it within a short drive of the most heavily trapped and surveyed ground in the state. Whether the coastal-plain lead reflects the voles or the surveyors is precisely what occurrence records can’t settle on their own.
A spring-heavy calendar, and a secure grade
Reports peak in March with 18 records, then scatter through the rest of the year, with a smaller September rise of 8. Winter quiet in the record is observer quiet, not vole quiet; this species stays active under snow. NatureServe ranks it S5 in New Jersey, secure, the strongest grade available, and it carries no separate state listing.
Full species profile
