Alaska’s tundra vole reports range from Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge in the Southwest to the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, and Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, though about three of every four come from the North Slope. Despite the name, this vole is as much a wetland specialist as a tundra one, favoring wet sedge meadows, marshy stream edges, and boggy ground with standing moisture.
It’s a confident swimmer when the ground floods, and it digs shallow burrows just under the moss and sedge mat rather than deep tunnel systems, staying close to the wet surface it depends on. Arctic summers are short, so tundra voles compress breeding into a few snow-free months, with females capable of raising several litters of 3 to 9 pups before fall freeze-up.
Reports peak from June through August, when the short Alaska summer opens up wet meadow habitat for both the vole and the people surveying it. Records here sit in the occasional range rather than the dense end, so a gap in reports from a given area says more about survey coverage than about whether the vole is using that ground.
Full species profile
