Thomomys bottae (Pocket Gopher)
Credit: Chuck Abbe
about the species
Thomomys bottae is broadly distributed across the western United States and northern Mexico where it occupies almost all available patches of friable soils from sea level to above timberline. Within California, T. bottae occurs statewide except for the high elevations of the central and northern Sierra Nevada and Modoc Plateau. It is the most taxonomically diverse species of mammal, with 213 subspecies (Patton 2005) and 16 within California (Patton and Smith 1990).
why species was selected
No subspecies is of conservation concern. Its value to the CCGP is its broad distribution across the state’s ecoregions.
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