Mammal Checklists of the United States

Big Stone National Wildlife Refuge

Ortonville, Minnesota

MAMMALS

Big Stone National Wildlife Refuge is part of the Big Stone Lake-Whetstone River Flood control project. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers transferred lands to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, establishing the refuge in 1975. The refuge now encompasses 11,275 acres of the Minnesota River valley in Western Minnesota. A unique visual and geographical feature is the red lichen-covered granite outcrops for which the refuge was named.

Big Stone is primarily a grassland system with an interesting prairie-floodplain forest transition. Wildlife diversity is sustained by the variety of habitat types available, including native prairie, seeded grasses, wetlands, wetlands, wet meadows, floodplain forests, granite outcrops, wood lots, agricultural food plots, and various successional stages of trees and brush along sub-irrigated pool edges.

The following mammals are year-round residents at Big Stone Refuge:

___ Masked Shrew                       ___ Franklin's Ground Squirrel
___ Short-tailed Shrew                 ___ Eastern Chipmunk
___ Little Brown Myotis                ___ Eastern Gray Squirrel
___ Silver-haired Bat                  ___ Eastern Fox Squirrel
___ Big Brown Bat                      ___ Red Squirrel
___ Hoary Bat                          ___ Plains Pocket Gopher
___ Red Bat                            ___ Beaver
___ Raccoon                            ___ House Mouse
___ Short-tailed Weasel                ___ Meadow Jumping Mouse
___ Long-tailed Weasel                 ___ White-footed Deer Mouse
___ Mink                               ___ Deer Mouse
___ River Otter                        ___ Grasshopper Mouse
___ Badger                             ___ Prairie Vole
___ Striped Skunk                      ___ Muskrat
___ Spotted Skunk                      ___ Norway Rat
___ Coyote                             ___ White-tailed Jackrabbit
___ Red Fox                            ___ Eastern Cottontail
___ Gray Fox                           ___ White-tailed Deer
___ Woodchuck                          ___ Mule Deer (occasional)
___ Richardson's Ground Squirrel       ___ Moose (occasional)
___ Thirteen-lined Ground Squirrel

For additional information contact:

                        Big Stone National Wildlife Refuge
                        25 NW 2nd Street
                        Ortonville, MN  56278
                        Phone: (612)839-3700

Return to Bird Checklist of Big Stone National Wildlife Refuge