Montana’s heather vole records point almost entirely to high country: Glacier National Park, the Absaroka-Beartooth Mountains, and Custer-Gallatin National Forest, three of the state’s most rugged subalpine and alpine landscapes. That’s a genuine habitat match. Heather voles favor cool, shrubby ground near timberline rather than the lowland grass and riverbottom habitat many other small mammals in this state prefer.
Only 76 records exist statewide, and June alone accounts for half of them, 38 out of 76. High-elevation fieldwork is naturally compressed into a short summer window once snowpack clears, so that spike likely reflects when biologists can physically reach these sites rather than a burst of vole activity.
NatureServe ranks the species S5, Secure, in Montana despite the thin record count, a sign that the low numbers reflect how hard this terrain is to survey rather than genuine scarcity.
Full species profile
