The striped skunk is a common and adaptable Coloradan. Open occurrence databases hold 495 records for it here, 353 of them iNaturalist photos. That is a modest tally for so widespread an animal, and the reason is simple: the striped skunk works the night shift.
An animal of edges
The striped skunk is a generalist that does well wherever people alter the land. It favors the seams between habitats: streamside corridors, brushy grassland, farm edges, and the green margins of towns and cities. The Colorado records reflect that, concentrating along the populated Front Range in Boulder, Larimer, and El Paso counties and reaching right into Denver and Adams counties, with the Rocky Mountain Arsenal refuge on the northeast edge of the metro among the top spots. It ranges widely across the lower and middle elevations statewide but thins out in the coldest, highest country. Black with the bold white back stripes that warn of its potent defensive spray, it is unmistakable, and it forages by night for insects, grubs, small rodents, eggs, and fruit.
The winter lull
Striped skunks do not truly hibernate, but Colorado’s cold still shuts them down. Through the hardest weeks they hole up in burrows, culverts, or under buildings, sometimes several females sharing one den, and drop into a drowsy torpor, living off stored fat and emerging mainly on milder nights. That dormancy, layered on top of a nocturnal habit, is why the occurrence record fades toward the depth of winter and rebuilds through spring and into fall as skunks move, breed, and disperse.
Status in Colorado
The striped skunk is native to Colorado and secure here, ranked S5 by NatureServe. You are far likelier to smell or glimpse one at night along a creek or a suburban greenbelt than to plan a sighting.
Full species profile
