No mammal is more thoroughly recorded in Louisiana than the common raccoon. Its 2161 records reach every corner of the state, from Pearl River Wildlife Management Area on the Mississippi line through Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve and the Atchafalaya country at Sherburne Wildlife Management Area, and out to Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge and the barrier island at Grand Isle.
A hand for the water’s edge
Raccoons are tied to shallow water more closely than almost any other Louisiana mammal. Their sensitive front paws work over crayfish, frogs, mussels, and fish along bayou banks and marsh edges, and they den in hollow trees and thickets within easy reach of that wet foraging. In a state built of swamp, bottomland, and coastal marsh, nearly every parish offers the mix of cover and shoreline a raccoon wants, and the map of records shows it.
A spring pulse in an animal that never sleeps the winter
Raccoons do not hibernate, and Louisiana’s mild winters keep them abroad in every month. Records climb sharply through March and April, when females are nursing litters in tree dens and males range widely, and they rise again in October and November as the year’s young strike out on their own.
Status in Louisiana
NatureServe ranks the common raccoon S5, Secure, in Louisiana, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
