FWP Discovers New Montana Mammal

Friday, September 02, 2005
Comprehensive Fish & Wildlife Conservation Strategy (CFWCS)

This article was Archived on Sunday, October 02, 2005

A Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks crew prospecting for small mammals made a landmark discovery earlier this month, documenting an animal previously unknown in Montana.

The big short-tailed shrew, a voracious insect-eating predator that could easily fit in a shirt pocket, was discovered on a federal waterfowl production area northeast of Plentywood, about 90 miles farther south and 60 miles farther west than its previous known range in North Dakota.

The discovery makes the big short-tailed shrew the 109 th mammal documented in Montana, and the eleventh shrew species in the state.

Shrews are among the most prodigious predators in the world. They eat primarily insects, mostly spiders, caterpillars and earthworms, but will feed on small vertebrates as well. The big short-tailed shrew is the only poisonous mammal in North America. It injects a debilitating poison through grooves in its teeth.

"Shrews are amazing animals," says FWP native species biologist Ryan Rauscher, whose crew discovered the big short-tailed shrew. "They have an incredibly fast metabolism which requires them to eat one to two times their own body weight every day. Their average life span seldom exceeds a year and a half."

The effort to document the presence and distribution of various small mammals, was funded by a State Wildlife Grant (SWG), federal money earmarked to enable states to broaden their conservation efforts to include more fish and wildlife species. Montana’s Comprehensive Fish and Wildlife Conservation Strategy, which will be submitted to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in October, is in part intended to bring Montana and other states a step closer to securing long-term federal funding needed to conserve and manage hundreds of species that fall in the conservation gap between the state’s major game animals and those that are threatened or endangered. SWG funds currently support conservation projects for species in greatest conservation need, meaning those for which biological information is lacking, whose populations are in decline or that are at risk of declining.

The Sheridan County habitat where the big short-tailed shrew was discovered is part of the Missouri coteau, an expanse of grassland and prairie potholes that extends across the Dakotas and southern Manitoba and Saskatchewan into northeastern Montana. The coteau is defined by Montana’s Comprehensive Fish and Wildlife Conservation Strategy as an area in need of conservation.

"As a Tier I focus area, we hope to continue using SWG funds to learn as much as possible about species like the big short-tailed shrew and implement habitat conservation actions on the ground to benefit all species in the area," says Rauscher. "Even animals as small as shrews are important players in overall ecosystem health."