One county dominates Oklahoma’s woodland vole record like few county clusters anywhere: Le Flore, in the Ouachita Mountains of the southeast, holds 226 of the state’s 357 reports. The Ouachitas’ oak-pine ridges and deep, shaded hollows are prime woodland vole ground, and clearly someone has trapped them hard. Cleveland and Murray counties follow at a distance, and the record reaches 29 counties in all, nearly all of them east of the plains.
Reports peak in April, with February through May carrying the bulk of the year. Woodland voles stay active under the litter in every season, so a spring crest in the record reflects survey timing more than the voles’ own calendar.
NatureServe hasn’t assigned the species a state rank in Oklahoma, marking it SNR, unranked. Given the breadth of the record across the state’s eastern woodlands, that reads as a data gap in the ranking process rather than a sign of trouble, though a proper assessment built on this much survey material would be welcome.
