Virginia’s occurrence data holds 243 records of the southern red-backed vole, on the rarer end for a Virginia mammal, and the state sits at the warm southern tail of a range that otherwise runs across Canada and the northern United States. Shenandoah National Park and the rest of the Blue Ridge high country hold what mapped presence the species has here.
A cool-forest specialist at its southern limit
This vole needs damp, cool forest floor thick with moss, rotting logs, and leaf litter, conditions common across the northern boreal belt but scarce in Virginia outside the higher Blue Ridge and Appalachian ridgelines. That’s why the record count stays low: the vole isn’t rare because it’s declining, it’s rare because Virginia offers only a sliver of the cool, high-elevation forest it needs.
A vole that eats more fungi than seeds
Unlike most voles, this species relies heavily on fungi, including underground truffle-like kinds, along with lichen, moss, and soft plant matter found on a shaded forest floor. Records here run heaviest from May through September, tracking the warmer months when both the vole and the surveyors looking for it are most active in the high country.
Status in Virginia
Virginia’s records don’t flag the southern red-backed vole as nonindigenous, and NatureServe ranks it S5, secure, native to its Virginia range. It’s a northern species holding on at the southern edge of what it can tolerate.
Full species profile
