Rhode Island’s occurrence databases hold 240 records of this mouse, a middling count for a species this widespread. Most come from iNaturalist, and the tally tracks where someone flipped a log or checked a trap line. It doesn’t measure how many mice actually live in the state.
Stone walls and old farmland give it cover inland
Arcadia Management Area sits over ground that was farmed and abandoned generations ago, and the stone walls left behind still lace the reforested land. Those loose rock piles, along with downed logs and brush tangles, give a white-footed mouse the crevices and runways it dens in through Rhode Island’s interior pine-oak woods.
Block Island’s shrub thickets and Ninigret’s old airfield edges
On Block Island, dense bayberry and shadbush thickets crowd the refuge’s open grassland, and that shrubby edge suits a species that forages under cover rather than out in the open. Ninigret National Wildlife Refuge, built over a decommissioned World War II naval airfield in South County, mixes shrubland, old runway edges, and salt pond fringe in a similar patchwork. Records there climb hardest late in the year, when fall small-mammal surveys tend to run.
Status in Rhode Island
The white-footed mouse is native to Rhode Island, per USGS NAS and NatureServe Explorer records. NatureServe ranks it S5, secure, matching its globally secure G5 rank.
Full species profile
