South Dakota’s yellow-bellied marmot record belongs to one corner of the state. Of 279 records, nearly all fall in the Black Hills: Custer County with 121, Pennington with 89, and Lawrence with 62, anchored by Black Hills National Forest, Custer State Park, Mount Rushmore National Memorial, and the Black Elk Wilderness. The hills are the eastern outpost of a species whose range otherwise runs through the mountains of the West.
A rock dweller in the granite hills
A marmot colony needs two things side by side, rock for refuge and grass for food, and the outcrops and talus of the Black Hills deliver both. Marmots den under boulders, feed in the meadows within a short waddle of their rocks, and duck into crevices at the first sign of a predator. Their sharp alarm whistle, which carries far across a slope, earned the group its folk name, whistle pig.
Eight months underground
Reports run from April into September and essentially vanish the rest of the year, because yellow-bellied marmots are deep hibernators that can spend eight months or more of the year in their burrows, living off the fat they pack on during the short mountain summer. The June peak reflects that urgency, with adults and the year’s new pups all feeding hard during the brief window above ground.
Status in South Dakota
NatureServe ranks the yellow-bellied marmot S5, Secure, in South Dakota, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
