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WOODCHUCK*
Marmota monax (Linnaeus 1758)

Order Rodentia : Family Sciuridae

*Introduced species

POPLULATION STATUS. Feral, enigmatic. There is one record of a woodchuck collected in Tarrant County in 1964, from approximately 4 miles south of Kennedale. That specimen is housed at the Fort Worth Museum of Science (catalog number 1428).

CONSERVATION STATUS. The IUCN lists the woodchuck as a species of least concern and it does not appear on any federal or state list.

REMARKS. Previous editions of this book have not included this record. However, one of us (DJS) reported on it in the 1983 book on East Texas mammals. It was concluded the animal had most likely been brought to the county and released even though it had established a burrow system. In the subsequent 50-year period since this record, no other specimens have been documented in Texas. Tarrant County is about 386 km (240 miles) west of the known range of the woodchuck in southeastern Arkansas, and 424 km (263 miles) south of the woodchuck's range in eastern Oklahoma.

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From The Mammals of Texas, Seventh Edition by David J. Schmidly and Robert D. Bradley, copyright © 1994, 2004, 2016.  Courtesy of the University of Texas Press.

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