This ground squirrel is a true prairie animal, more at home in short grass and open fields like those at Killdeer Plains Wildlife Area than in Ohio’s forested regions, which cover most of the state. The 231 records gathered since 2000 concentrate in the scattered pockets of open grassland the species actually needs, and Wayne County alone accounts for 177 of them.
Records fall to essentially zero from November through February, then climb fast through spring to a summer high. That’s not an observer-effort quirk, it’s biology: thirteen-lined ground squirrels are true hibernators that spend roughly half the year underground in torpor, so a winter record would be a genuine surprise. Ohio hasn’t assigned the species a numeric NatureServe rank (SNR, unranked).
Full species profile
