CLARKSBURG, W.Va. (WBOY) — An animal considered by the National Parks Service (NPS) to be a “species of concern” in West Virginia was not too long ago noticed on a path digicam in Monongahela Nationwide Forest.
The nationwide forest shared the footage from March on its official Facebook page this week. Within the submit, it mentioned there are solely an estimated 100,000 of the federally threatened Allegheny woodrats left within the wild. Regardless of their title and enormous dimension, the rodent is extra carefully associated to a mouse than a rat.
In contrast to its less-desirable cousins, the Indiana Division of Pure Sources describes the Allegheny woodrat as “docile and meticulously clear, thereby posing no risk to human well being or security.” It does, nonetheless, have a behavior of accumulating shiny objects and bringing them to their nest, Tennessee wildlife officers explain.
Whereas the Monongahela Nationwide Forest mentioned there’s hypothesis as to why the Allegheny woodrat is declining, some scientists imagine that the gypsy moth, also known as the spongy moth, which harms acorn-bearing oak bushes, is damaging the rodent’s meals supply and habitat.
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The Forest Service didn’t specify the place within the forest the Allegheny woodrat was noticed.
Again in October of 2022, the NPS introduced that it had discovered grownup and younger Allegheny woodrats in Harpers Ferry whereas it was conducting a survey. It was the primary time the animal had been noticed within the Nationwide Historic Park in additional than 20 years on the time. Earlier than the survey outcomes, the animal was believed to be domestically extinct.
The primarily nocturnal woodrat was as soon as discovered from Connecticut west to Indiana and south to Alabama, in line with the Pennsylvania Game Commission. The species’ vary, like its inhabitants, is believed to have since declined. Along with West Virginia, it has earned conservation standing throughout Alabama, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Virginia, NPS explains.
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