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The muskrat houses, once spotted in multitudes, were missing.
That’s what a reader — who recalled seeing the critters’ homes dotting wetlands along the Minnesota River Valley in the past — noticed recently.
He wrote to Curious Minnesota, the Strib’s reader-powered reporting project, to ask: “What happened to all the muskrats?”
The state’s Department of Natural Resources has actually been asking the same question. The furry aquatic rodents’ population has been in decline in Minnesota and North America since the 1980s.
Muskrats are still one of Minnesota’s “most widespread and abundant” furbearers, or mammals with fur that’s commercially valuable, said Jason Abraham, a furbearer specialist with the DNR.
They aren’t considered endangered or threatened.
“However, while they are still present and even flourishing in some well-managed wetlands, we’re finding evidence that muskrat populations are not what they used to be,” he said.