Strecker’s pocket gopher shows up in Texas records without a single iNaturalist photograph. All 580 sightings come from GBIF-linked survey and specimen data, which fits a fossorial rodent that spends nearly its entire life underground and rarely surfaces where anyone can photograph it. NatureServe rates the species S4, Apparently Secure, in Texas, a healthier status than many pocket gophers get.
The three places listed, Big Bend National Park, Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge, and Big Thicket National Preserve, span dramatically different Texas landscapes, from Chihuahuan Desert to Hill Country canyon to East Texas piney woods, which says more about where surveyors have looked than about one connected range. Records climb sharply in April and fall to almost nothing by August, a pattern that likely tracks when soil is workable enough for fresh mounds to show at the surface rather than any real population swing. With 580 records it lands in the common bucket for Texas mammals, though for a species that lives almost entirely below ground, that count is really a measure of survey effort in a few well-studied sites.
