Kansas holds one of the strongest woodland vole records anywhere on the plains: 461 reports from 28 counties, with at least a few in every month of the year. The weight sits in the east. Greenwood, Riley, and Douglas counties together account for well over half of all records, a belt of oak-hickory woods and tallgrass edges that includes long-term study sites like the Kansas Ecological Reserves, which produce records year after year.
That last point matters. A vole that lives its whole life under leaf litter doesn’t get reported casually; it gets reported where someone runs a trap line, and eastern Kansas has several. The month-by-month spread, busiest in spring but never empty, reflects that steady effort more than any rhythm in the voles themselves.
NatureServe ranks the species S5, secure, in Kansas, and here the ranking and the record agree. The woodland vole reaches the western edge of its range in this state, and the eastern woodlands and Flint Hills clearly still hold it in force.
