Nutria permanently damage marshes and other wetlands, they also damage sea walls and man made shorelines.
Pikas are my favorite native small critter even if you have to head up to talus and scree to see them.
This thread reminded me to learn the local voles rodents and bats which we have quite a few of but I do know that the northern bog lemmings are another native species.
Saw some of these at Hurricane Ridge this past summer. Got some nice pictures of one fellow that put on a modeling show for the tourists.
This is what I was going to mention. A fascinating animal.
Here’s the Wikipedia article on mammals of Oregon.
Some of the ~larger rodents include woodrats, several ground squirrels, some pocket gophers, etc. And then there’s the jackalope, of course.
Nobody has mentioned porcupines yet?
Well, they only arrived after the Panamanian bridge formed, so maybe not ‘native’?
They did a pretty good job making that hoax page, didnt they?
I’m surprised nobody mentioned banana slugs. And geoducks. Two slimy, spineless, relatively large animals that serve at times as mascots for the area.
We’ve been focusing on mammals larger than rats but smaller than cougars … otherwise I was going to bring up bald eagles being something of a nuisance. I mean that in a good way, it’s pleasing to see when environment efforts work and the return of this bird in the Willamette Valley is a good sign that economic development and proper custodianship of nature can indeed work together for the greater good.
Hopefully the powers that be will start considering releasing condors here sometime in the future.
ETA: You can’t believe everything on Wikipedia … now can we?
Up until about 10 years ago we had pygmy rabbits
He asked about " Mammals larger than rats".
Ok, they may not be mammals, but banana slugs and geoducks are larger than rats.
Well geoducks certainly can be, and a banana slug can be about as long.
The geoduck “body” is about the size of a good sized rat, but the siphon can be a meter long! Normally a adult weighs about 1.5 #, but some 10X that size have been reported.
Heavier than a rat, certainly. (12oz is normal for a good sized male, but we had a pet who was 2#!)
But a large male norway rat outweighs a banana slug slug by about 3X.
A banana slug is longer than and can outweigh a Black Rat, however,
Ariolimax columbianus can be up to ten inches and weigh just a little over 4oz.
Rattus rattus, per wiki is 5 to 7" long, including a 3-4" tail, and weighs 4–12 oz.
So, not counting the tail, certainly longer- and a big slug* can* outweigh a small adult rat.
That being said, if you see a big specimen of either the slug or the geoduck in the wild, they are amazing!
Not to mention geoducks are tasty.
The big one have such a long life that it is rather a shame to eat them, however.
No one’s mentioned the Long-tailed weasel yet - saw one on Sunday up in the Cascades, I assume they’re in Oregon too. Cute little things.