Carson, Gila, and Lincoln national forests carry every western heather vole record in New Mexico, three of the state’s higher, cooler mountain ranges. That fits a vole built for alpine meadows and montane forest, habitat that only exists at elevation in an otherwise low, dry state.
Just 21 records exist, and the monthly counts don’t add up to a clean pattern: small numbers turn up in January, May, and September with gaps in between, more consistent with sparse survey effort than any real seasonal swing.
NatureServe ranks the species S3, Vulnerable, in New Mexico, a step down from its secure G5 rank across the rest of its range in the Rockies and Pacific Northwest. Among the mammals tracked here, this is one of the more thinly recorded, sitting near the bottom for total occurrences statewide.
Full species profile
