Utah’s 1295 yellow-bellied marmot records belong to the high country. Salt Lake, Summit, and Utah counties lead the map, their counts built along the Wasatch canyons, while Cedar Breaks National Monument and Capitol Reef National Park hold the largest named clusters farther south and the High Uintas Wilderness anchors the northeast.
A rock pile resident
Marmots are big ground squirrels that build their burrows under boulder fields and talus, always within a short waddle of the meadows where they graze grasses and forbs. A good rock pile supplies escape holes, lookout points, and a den chamber that stays dry, which is why Utah’s records gather where talus meets open slope: Twin Peaks and Lone Peak wildernesses above the Salt Lake Valley, Wasatch and Uinta national forests, and the high plateaus of Dixie National Forest.
Out for barely half the year
The calendar is blunt. From June through August reports surge as marmots feed hard to put on fat, then counts collapse to near zero from November through February, with only a trickle in March. Yellow-bellied marmots are among the longest hibernators in North America, spending up to eight months underground in a chamber beneath the boulders, living off the previous summer’s fat while snow covers their meadows.
Status in Utah
NatureServe ranks the yellow-bellied marmot S4, Apparently Secure, in Utah, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
