Endangered
Podolsk mole rat
Spalax zemni
Podolsk mole rat is a rodent in the family Spalacidae (order Rodentia) — Spalax zemni, recorded as Endangered.
Range and habitat
It has a wide but severely fragmented range throughout Ukraine, ranging from the near the border with Poland south to near the border with Moldova, and east to central Ukraine. It primarily inhabits undeveloped steppe habitat, but also side roads, forest belts, agricultural fields, and even former military firing ranges. It is endemic to western and central Ukraine.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
In crisis
This species is thought to be threatened by habitat loss due to cultivation and development, and is classified as endangered on the IUCN Red List. It has a highly fragmented population, and the relatively wide range that this species is thought to have throughout Ukraine may be an overestimate for this reason.
Podolsk mole rat is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Podolsk mole rat, Wikidata item Q1766018. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
