Animals & Plants of Theodore Roosevelt National Park
The 34 animals, plants, and fungi you can find at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, with sizes, diets, and whether you should worry. See the full park guide at Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
Theodore Roosevelt is North Dakota badlands and mixed-grass prairie, and it holds the big grazers of the northern plains. American bison and feral horses graze the bottoms, black-tailed prairie dogs build towns along the roads, and pronghorn and mule deer range the breaks. Prairie rattlesnakes and bullsnakes hunt the grass, so watch where you step.
Turn this into a game: Play Theodore Roosevelt National Park Bingo →Common questions
Which Theodore Roosevelt animals demand real distance?
At Theodore Roosevelt National Park, give space to American bison, Mountain lion, Elk, Prairie rattlesnake, and Bighorn sheep. American bison: Bison look slow and calm, but they are not tame and they hurt more people in Yellowstone than any other animal. Mountain lion: Confrontations are very rare — even in Yellowstone, with a healthy population, few have ever been documented. Elk: Elk look calm but they are large and wild. Prairie rattlesnake: It is the only dangerously venomous snake at Yellowstone, Badlands, Theodore Roosevelt, and Wind Cave. Bighorn sheep: Bighorn sheep are shy and would rather climb away than come near you. (per NPS species pages).
What do Theodore Roosevelt animals eat?
At Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the most interesting eaters are American bison, Mountain lion, Black-tailed prairie dog, and Elk. American bison eats grasses, sedges, a few leafy plants. Mountain lion eats elk, deer, marmots, porcupines. Black-tailed prairie dog eats grasses, forbs, roots, seeds. Elk eats grasses, forbs, shrubs, tree bark in winter. (per NPS species pages).
Which Theodore Roosevelt species has the strangest true fact?
The strangest true thing about Theodore Roosevelt National Park: Prairie rattlesnake: It is the only venomous reptile in Yellowstone, Badlands, Theodore Roosevelt, and Wind Cave National Parks. North American porcupine: At Theodore Roosevelt, porcupines are often spotted high in the tree canopy eating twigs — they're strong, if slow, climbers. (per NPS species pages).
Anything here that bites?
Venomous
- Prairie rattlesnake: It is the only dangerously venomous snake at Yellowstone, Badlands, Theodore Roosevelt, and Wind Cave.
Keep away
- American badger: Badgers would rather dig away than fight and avoid people entirely.
- American bison: Bison look slow and calm, but they are not tame and they hurt more people in Yellowstone than any other animal.
- Bighorn sheep: Bighorn sheep are shy and would rather climb away than come near you.
- Bobcat: Very low.
- Coyote: Coyotes almost always run from people.
- Elk: Elk look calm but they are large and wild.
- Feral horse: Yes, keep your distance.
- Mountain lion: Confrontations are very rare — even in Yellowstone, with a healthy population, few have ever been documented.
- Mule deer: Mule deer look calm and tame, but they are wild animals with sharp hooves, and bucks have antlers in fall.
- Pronghorn: Not a real worry: pronghorn keep their distance from people on their own.
- White-tailed deer: White-tailed deer normally run from people.
Don't touch or eat
- American pasqueflower: Every part of this plant is poisonous to eat, and the fresh sap can blister skin.
- Great Plains toad: Not dangerous if you leave it alone.
- North American porcupine: A porcupine cannot throw or shoot its quills, but they detach the instant something touches them, and the barbed tips work deeper into skin over time.
- Plains spadefoot: Not dangerous.
Bites if handled
- American beaver: Beavers are shy and would rather swim off than confront anyone.
- Black-tailed prairie dog: They will not bite you if you leave them alone, and the real hazard is invisible: prairie dogs can carry fleas that spread sylvatic plague, the same bacterium that causes bubonic plague in people.
- Bullsnake: Not dangerous at all — it has no venom.
- Burrowing owl: Burrowing owls are harmless to people.
- Great horned owl: This owl hunts small animals at night and will not come after you.
- Greater short-horned lizard: Not dangerous.
- Red-tailed hawk: None.
- Turkey vulture: None directly — it eats only dead animals and avoids people.
Everything else on this page is harmless. What each group means.
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Mammal American badger
Taxidea taxus
A short, wide-bodied digger with a white-striped face, common on the grasslands of Yellowstone and Badlands, that can vanish underground in minutes.
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Mammal American beaver
Castor canadensis
North America's largest rodent, a keystone species whose dams reshape whole streams at Yellowstone, Glacier, and ten other parks along the route.
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Mammal American bison
Bison bison
The biggest land animal in North America, a shaggy grazer of the plains you can watch cross the road in Yellowstone.
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Plant American pasqueflower
Pulsatilla patens ssp. multifida
A furry, purple-blue prairie flower that beats the grass out of the ground each spring, blooming before almost anything else is green.
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Bird American white pelican
Pelecanus erythrorhynchos
A huge white bird with an orange throat pouch that fishes in groups and nests on tiny islands in Yellowstone Lake and other high-country waters.
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Plant Big sagebrush
Artemisia tridentata
The silver-leaved, sharp-smelling evergreen shrub of the high desert West, and the main food of the greater sage-grouse nearly all year.
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Mammal Bighorn sheep
Ovis canadensis
A wild sheep of cliffs and canyons, where rams carry heavy curled horns and both sexes cross steep rock other animals can't.
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Bird Black-billed magpie
Pica hudsonia
A black-and-white corvid with a tail as long as its body, common on fences and roadsides across the northern Rockies and Great Plains.
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Mammal Black-tailed prairie dog
Cynomys ludovicianus
A burrowing ground squirrel, not a dog. Its towns along Theodore Roosevelt's scenic loop mow the grass short and pull bison and pronghorn in to graze.
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Mammal Bobcat
Lynx rufus
A small wildcat about twice the size of a house cat, common but rarely seen, that can bring down prey many times its own weight.
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Amphibian Boreal chorus frog
Pseudacris maculata
A finger-sized frog whose spring trill fills Rocky Mountain wetlands, and whose cells can freeze solid and still wake up.
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Reptile Bullsnake
Pituophis catenifer sayi
A big, harmless snake that fakes being a rattlesnake — hissing, flattening its head, and shaking its tail in dry grass — to talk its way out of trouble.
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Bird Burrowing owl
Athene cunicularia
A small owl that nests underground in old prairie-dog burrows and hunts in daylight across Western grasslands, unlike most owls.
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Mammal Coyote
Canis latrans
The wild dog you're most likely to hear at a national park — a coyote, at home in the desert, the mountains, and the edges of towns.
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Mammal Elk
Cervus canadensis
A large deer of mountain meadows whose bulls grow branching antlers and, each fall, bugle a high whistling call across the valley.
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Mammal Feral horse
Equus ferus caballus
Ranch horses turned loose on the open range and never gathered back. Their descendants live in Theodore Roosevelt's South Unit as feral livestock.
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Bird Great horned owl
Bubo virginianus
A big night hunter with feathery "horns" and a deep hoot, found from the saguaro desert to the Everglades, hunting after dark on silent wings.
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Amphibian Great Plains toad
Anaxyrus cognatus
A warty prairie toad that rises from the ground by the thousands after summer rain to fill Great Sand Dunes with a buzzing, metallic trill.
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Reptile Greater short-horned lizard
Phrynosoma hernandesi
A flat, spiky, dirt-colored lizard, sometimes called a horned toad, that can squirt blood from its eyes at a coyote and gives birth to live young.
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Bird Mountain bluebird
Sialia currucoides
A sky-blue thrush of high, open country, the only bluebird seen regularly above 5,000 feet, nesting in lava-rock crevices at Craters of the Moon.
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Mammal Mountain lion
Puma concolor
A tan, solitary big cat found from Glacier to Mesa Verde, called cougar, puma, or panther by region, and rarely seen at all.
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Mammal Mule deer
Odocoileus hemionus
A western deer named for its big mule-like ears, common along canyon rims and desert washes in Grand Canyon, Zion, Yosemite, and Saguaro.
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Mammal North American porcupine
Erethizon dorsatum
A slow, quill-covered rodent that climbs into the treetops at Theodore Roosevelt to eat twigs, and North America's second-largest rodent after the beaver.
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Amphibian Plains spadefoot
Spea bombifrons
A cat-eyed toad that digs backward into sand with a spade on each hind foot and spends nearly all year hidden underground.
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Plant Ponderosa pine
Pinus ponderosa
A tall western pine whose sun-warmed bark smells like butterscotch and vanilla, and which drops its low branches so ground fire can pass safely beneath it.
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Reptile Prairie rattlesnake
Crotalus viridis
A gray-green pit viper with a buzzing rattle, the only venomous reptile at several of the parks it shares with prairie dogs and badgers.
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Mammal Pronghorn
Antilocapra americana
North America's fastest land mammal, seen in Yellowstone's northern range and at Lava Beds, built to outrun a predator that went extinct 12,000 years ago.
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Bird Red-tailed hawk
Buteo jamaicensis
The hawk most often recorded in Yellowstone. We watched a hawk take a pika near the Roosevelt cabins and could not tell you which hawk it was.
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Bird Sharp-tailed grouse
Tympanuchus phasianellus
A prairie grouse that dances on open ground at dawn, stamping its feet and inflating purple air sacs on its neck to attract a mate.
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Bird Turkey vulture
Cathartes aura
A large, dark soaring bird with a bare red head, circling on thermals over open country, using one of the sharpest noses of any bird.
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Bird Western meadowlark
Sturnella neglecta
A grassland songbird with a yellow throat and a black V on its chest, the state bird of Montana, Wyoming, and North Dakota.
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Reptile Western painted turtle
Chrysemys picta bellii
A smooth-shelled turtle with red-striped legs that basks on logs in northern lakes and survived being nearly frozen as a hatchling.
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Plant Western wheatgrass
Pascopyrum smithii
A blue-green prairie grass whose underground rhizomes weave a tough sod — the official state grass of North and South Dakota.
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Mammal White-tailed deer
Odocoileus virginianus
The most common large mammal in eastern parks, running through the woods and waving a white tail like a flag when it bolts.