Endangered
Sandy mole rat
Spalax arenarius
Sandy mole rat is a rodent in the family Spalacidae (order Rodentia) — Spalax arenarius, recorded as Endangered.
Range and habitat
It is restricted to a very small region of southern Ukraine, on sandy habitats along the lower Dnieper River on the Black Sea coastal plain. The range, that is about 3,000 square kilometres (1,200 mi2), is the smallest known of all Ukrainian mammals and may be the smallest of all European mammals. It inhabits moderately wet, sandy soils with low subterranean waters, in steppes dominated by absinth-grass or absinth-spurge, with sparse vegetation otherwise.
The primary segment of the population inhabits the Black Sea Biosphere Reserve, and where they were thought to have a stable population trend.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
In crisis
As of the 2008 IUCN assessment, about 15,000 to 20,000 mature individuals were thought to exist. Even so, populations outside of this protected area were thought to be declining. The primary threat to this species was habitat conversion by the afforestation of the sandy soils for stabilization and wood production.
The entire population of the species is found in areas affected by the Russo-Ukrainian War, that has led to an estimated 50% decline in their population over 2022 and 2023.
Sandy 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 Sandy mole rat, Wikidata item Q580210. 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.
