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Armadillos in Michigan? Officials aren’t sure but mull killing season

State wildlife regulators say armadillos are in Michigan, but it not so cut-and-dry. Photo via iStock/Lois McCleary via Bridge Michigan.

Editor note: This story was originally published by Bridge Michigan��(bridgemi.com), a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. To get regular coverage from Bridge Michigan, sign up for a free Bridge Michigan newsletter ��().” 

by Laura Herberg, Bridge Michigan

Michigan officials say they need to get ahead of a problem they’re not even sure they have: armadillos.

The only evidence the armored animals are in the state is a handful of roadkill samples and a single photo. Some Michigan Department of Natural Resources officials think those animals were moved into Michigan from elsewhere and didn’t get here naturally.

But Becky Humphries, chair of the Michigan Natural Resources Commission, seemed skeptical of the idea people would be “moving armadillos around.”

“I can’t imagine why the hell they would,” she said. “Sometimes the department doesn’t recognize when species first are found and people see sightings.”

The mammals, , have been identified in states bordering Michigan, likely pushed northward by climate change. Natural Resources Commissioner John Walters said at a meeting last week he wants to take steps toward allowing people to kill them here.

Armadillos are burrowing creatures, and their burrows beneath decks and even houses have been and tear up yards. They also can carry diseases including leprosy. However, because they feed on other pests such as ants and cockroaches.

Between 1989 and 2022, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources confirmed six reports of armadillos in Michigan. Five were roadkill samples tested by the DNR Wildlife Disease Lab: two from Ottawa County and one each from Ionia, Luce, and Saginaw counties. The DNR also confirmed a photo from Sanilac County , an online platform on which people record and identify plants and animals.

There have been no confirmed sightings of live armadillo in Michigan, according to the DNR. And, as for those six confirmed sightings, some DNR staffers are suspicious of their origin.

“All of these are suspected of being picked up in a different state and discarded in Michigan, but we don’t have definitive proof of that,” DNR Bear, Furbearer and Small Game Specialist Cody Norton told Bridge in an email.

If armadillos had naturally wandered into the state, Norton said, it would make sense to spot them in the southernmost counties, but the roadkill samples and the photo came from around the state, including in the Upper Peninsula.

Armadillos migrated up from Mexico and into southern states like Texas in the 1840s and Florida in the 1920s. With climate change, their distribution has spanned northward, all the way up to states like Illinois, Ohio and Indiana.

A mapped out where the nine-banded armadillo (or their dead bodies) have been seen. The study mentioned “occasional reports” of armadillo in Michigan, but one of the authors, Brett DeGregorio, told Bridge researchers didn’t map those reports because there was no precise location data for Michigan armadillo roadkill and he heard the iNaturalist sighting was a prank.

Still, DeGregorio thinks armadillos have walked into the Wolverine State.

“I have no doubt that a handful of armadillos have made it to Michigan and then were hit by vehicles or died overwinter,” he said.

This is not the first time armadillos have been looked into by the state. In 2024, state officials began evaluating whether armadillos should be put on the .

“They were having issues in Illinois and Missouri, mainly like car accidents, getting hit in the road,” said Ryan Wheeler, an invasive species biologist for the DNR. “And we were like, ‘Ah, we might need to look into these.’”

After reviewing the roadkill and photo evidence, the group determined armadillos have been in the state, but they don’t seem to be established.

“I mean, they’re obviously consistently showing up here,” Wheeler said. “But, as of right now, there’s nothing that we can point to to say, ‘Yes, armadillos are here, they’re reproducing and we have a resident population.’”

That probably because, if armadillos do make it to Michigan — whether on foot or on a moving truck or as a souvenir from a family vacation — they likely can’t survive Michigan harsh winters.

But that expected to . Experts like Wheeler think it will only be a matter of time before armadillos clearly settle in Michigan.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

by Sara Swanson

Sara Swanson is an editor, writer and a founder of the Manchester Mirror.