Michigan’s open databases hold 297 records of the star-nosed mole, with the clearest reports tracing to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and Huron-Manistee National Forest. That’s a record of where people found soft, saturated ground to dig through, not a count of how many moles live in the state.
Wet ground behind the dunes
Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is known for open sand, but the mole’s records there don’t come from the dunes themselves. They trace instead to the wetter, low-lying pockets tucked behind the dune ridges: interdunal wetlands, spring-fed streams, and the shorelines of inland lakes like Glen Lake, where the ground stays soft enough to tunnel through. Farther inland, Huron-Manistee National Forest offers a different kind of wet ground across the northern Lower Peninsula, with tannin-stained rivers, streamside bogs, and swampy forest floor the mole can dig through even after a hard freeze locks up drier soil nearby.
A nose built for touch, not sight
Twenty-two soft, fleshy rays ring its nostrils, and each one carries touch receptors the mole taps against the mud dozens of times a second to identify prey before it can react. Tiny eyes and dense, water-shedding fur round out an animal built to hunt as much underwater as underground, taking worms, insect larvae, and other small water life from tunnels that often open straight into a stream or pond.
Status in Michigan
NatureServe ranks the star-nosed mole S5, secure, and it’s native to Michigan. Reports climb sharply from May into July, in line with the warmer-season litters this species raises, then drop off through the colder months as digging activity and observer effort both fall.
