Range Description

At the beginning of the 20th century the species was distributed along whole steppe zone from W Ukraine through Russia and Kazakhstan to the Irtysh River. However, in the first half of the 20th century hunting and habitat loss (ploughing of steppes and conversion to arable land) significantly reduced the range of bobak marmot in the European steppes. By the 1940s the European range of the bobak marmot had become fragmented into isolated populations in unused land and protected areas. Currently the majority of the range is in the Urals and N Kazakhstan.