Michigan’s woodland vole file is ten records deep, and half of them come from one place: Berrien County in the far southwest corner, up against Indiana. That’s the pattern you’d expect for a woodland animal at the northern edge of its range, slipping into the state along its warmest, most forested fringe. The other five records scatter widely, from Ingham and Barry in the south to Kalkaska, Manistee, and Cheboygan up north.
The calendar adds its own caution: the most recent Michigan record dates to 2016. For an animal that hides under forest litter and almost never shows itself, a quiet decade may mean nobody trapped in the right woods, or it may mean genuine scarcity. The record can’t settle that.
NatureServe ranks the species S3, vulnerable, in Michigan. Southern Michigan’s remaining beech-maple and oak woods are its ground, and the southwest corner, with the state’s mildest climate and oldest forest cover, is where a fresh survey would logically start.
