Washington’s 18 western meadow vole records reach from Whitman and Spokane counties in the Palouse country through Okanogan and out to Skagit and Whatcom near the saltwater, a spread that suits a vole tied to wet ground wherever that ground occurs.
A vole that needs wet grass
Meadow voles live where grass and sedge grow thick and damp: marsh edges, wet meadows, stream banks, and irrigated pasture. They cut surface runways through the thatch, feeding on green shoots, sedges, and the occasional insect or seed, and they stay active day and night in every season rather than hibernating.
Breed fast, live short
A female can raise several litters from spring through fall, and few voles live past their first year, so local numbers can surge and crash within a single season. That boom and bust biology, more than any seasonal pattern, is what makes an encounter with this small brown vole hard to predict.
Status in Washington
NatureServe ranks the western meadow vole S5, Secure, in Washington, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
