Once found in most of the eastern and central borders of the United States and along the southern borders of Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia in Canada, the only extant population east of the Mississippi now occurs on Block Island off the south coast of Rhode Island. (West of the Mississippi Burying Beetles can be found in eastern Oklahoma, Arkansas, eastern Kansas, and central Nebraska and in extreme southern South Dakota). 

Block Island Monitoring

The RI department of Environmental management biologist, Chris Raithel, annually monitors the Block Island population by pit fall trapping, then pairing up a percentage of the males and females caught and provisioning them with a carcass to help augment the population. The three main components of the recovery plan is to monitor, protect, and manage the EXISTING populations; it is important that we know what is happening with the wild populations.