Effort underway to grow Allegheny woodrat population, here's where in Pennsylvania

A multi-state effort is underway to increase the number of rare Allegheny woodrats and the first pups will be released in June, including one in southwestern Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania Game Commission, Maryland Zoo and the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine’s Wildlife Futures Program are members of the Allegheny Woodrat Working Group that have teamed up to start a Woodrat Captive Breeding Program (WCBP).

The program involves raising captive woodrats at the zoo and releasing them in habitat areas with rock outcroppings.

Right now a female woodrat captured from Mifflin County is at the zoo and has three pups.

In June, one pup will be released on public land in Somerset County where there is an existing population with lower genetic diversity.

“The hope is that this pup will grow in this population and then hopefully next year will reproduce and contribute some diverse genes to this population,” said Kate Amspacher Otterbein, mammal recovery specialist at the Game Commission.

The other two woodrats will go to the state of Indiana.

Why woodrats matter

These creatures are different from the invasive Norway rats that are found around human developments.

“Woodrats are in a completely different genus, they are not even super closely related to the Norway rats that everyone thinks of when they hear the word rat,” she said.

“They are a native species and they are a habitat specialist. They are found just in these very specific rocky conditions in forest cover. They exist only in small patches, sort of scattered across the state

The average adult weighs less than a pound and is about 17 inches in total length, including an eight-inch tail.

Woodrats don’t hibernate but spend the winter in rocky areas.

“The rock is really their safe place where it’s really difficult for predators to get to them,” she said.

They collect and store hard mast crops, like acorns and hickory nuts, and fungi to survive the winter. They also collect nonfood items like bottle caps, snake skins and shotgun shells which contributes to some nicknaming them as packrats.

In the spring and summer, they eat plants, fruits and berries.

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Breeding woodrats

The program doesn’t have an overall goal for the number of woodrats they want to produce, but she said the project’s geneticist recommends they build up to 20 individuals to start as the founders for captive breeding.

“Just to ensure we are pulling from a diverse breeding stock, that’s the goal we are focusing on,” she said.

The first woodrat captured for the program turned out to be pregnant and subsequently gave birth to three pups at the zoo. Ultimately, she will be joined by woodrats from Virginia and Indiana to breed subsequent generations.

“We previously had Allegheny woodrats and were quite successful at breeding them so I’m optimistic about having lots of pups to release into the wild,” Erin Cantwell Grimm, Mammal Curator at the Maryland Zoo, said in a news release.

The pups will stay at the zoo for a few weeks before being transferred to a soft release pen where they’ll grow and become acclimated to the wild before being released on their own. Because the pups will be released, the WCBP team is taking a hands-off approach so the animals don’t form human attachments that would limit their chances for success after release. Keepers are primarily monitoring the pups via a nest box camera.

While the project is starting with the Maryland Zoo, Amspacher Otterbein said more facilities across multiple states will be participating in rearing the pups.

“The idea is to not put all of our eggs in one basket," she said. "To make sure that we are not putting too much of a burden on any one facility and to allow a little bit of diversity in how things are being approached, to figure out what works best."

Each year only a few will be released back into the wild in the areas where officials are seeing the lowest genetic diversity.

As the program grows and it has more offspring, it will consider reintroduction efforts at historic sites where these animals once lived.

In Pennsylvania, the efforts will focus on the southcentral part of the state.

"Southcentral Pennsylvania has one of our most genetically in-need populations,” Amspacher Otterbein said. “We do have woodrats in southwest, southcentral, northcentral, northeast and southeast. All of the three southern regions in Pennsylvania have woodrats and two of the northern regions do."

Overall she believes there are only a “couple hundred” Allegheny woodrats in the commonwealth, making them a species of conservation concern.

“Numbers are dwindling across the state. Historically there were also populations in northwestern Pennsylvania, we unfortunately have lost those,” Amspacher Otterbein said. “In the past 40 years or so, we’ve lost 70% of the woodrats in the state. Every year it seems like we have populations where numbers are declining.”

In addition to captive breeding, work is ongoing to improve the habitat for these animals that are part of the ecosystem across the Appalachian Mountain range.

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“The Allegheny woodrat is a specialist within a very unique community in Pennsylvania and that community is associated with these rocky outcrops. So losing the Allegheny woodrat is not only a loss for current and future Pennsylvanians because of the loss of diversity of what was once here, but it’s also a loss for that community that is filled with predators and prey that all interact and live in this very unique system," Amspacher Otterbein said. "So taking a piece out of that puzzle means that the puzzle will never be put back together correctly and the same as it once was.

"This species is a very important player in this community that exists within these very unique systems in Pennsylvania."

Brian Whipkey is the outdoors columnist for USA TODAY Network sites in Pennsylvania. Contact him at bwhipkey@gannett.com and sign up for our weekly Go Outdoors PA newsletter email on this website's homepage under your login name. Follow him on Facebook @whipkeyoutdoors, and Instagram at whipkeyoutdoors.

This article originally appeared on The Daily American: Where do Allegheny woodrats live in Pennsylvania