Wyoming’s occurrence record for the yellow-bellied marmot reads like a map of the state’s high country. Of 2,541 records, the heaviest concentrations sit in Teton and Park counties, anchored by Yellowstone National Park with 993 records and Grand Teton National Park with 698, with thinner strings of sightings running through the Jedediah Smith, Bridger, and Cloud Peak wildernesses and out to Devils Tower National Monument.
A mountaineer that lives in the rocks
The yellow-bellied marmot is a big, grizzled ground squirrel built around rock. It needs boulder piles, talus slopes, and rocky outcrops next to open meadow, the burrow entrances tucked under stone where coyotes and bears cannot dig them out, the feeding grounds a short waddle away. Wyoming supplies that combination generously along its mountain ranges and rocky rims, which is why the record follows the high country from Yellowstone’s slopes south through the Bridger-Teton National Forest. The sharp whistle it gives from a lookout rock, the call that earns marmots the name whistle pig, often reveals a colony before any animal is visible.
Long sleep, short summer
Marmots are among the deepest hibernators in North America, spending up to eight months of the year underground. Wyoming’s record tracks that rhythm closely. Sightings are almost absent from October through April, surge with spring emergence in May, and hold strong through August as the animals feed heavily to build the fat that carries them through winter. By September they are slipping back below ground, adults first, juveniles last.
Status in Wyoming
NatureServe ranks the yellow-bellied marmot S5, Secure, in Wyoming, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
