Nebraska’s 251 striped skunk records sketch a statewide animal with a western tilt. The Panhandle counties of Scotts Bluff, Banner, and Sioux hold the heaviest concentrations, Cherry County anchors the Sandhills, and Douglas and Lancaster counties carry the record into the more settled east.
An omnivore of edges and open country
A skunk earns its living after dark, working field edges, grassland draws, and creek bottoms for grubs, beetles, grasshoppers, mice, eggs, and fallen fruit. That flexible diet lets it live nearly anywhere there is cover to den in, from the fossil buttes of Agate Fossil Beds National Monument to the breaks along the Niobrara National Scenic River and the hardwoods of Indian Cave State Park. Burrows dug by other animals, rock piles, hollow logs, and spaces beneath farm buildings all serve as dens.
A February surge out of the winter den
Skunks do not truly hibernate, but they den up through the coldest weeks, sometimes several females sharing one burrow, and stir only on mild nights. Nebraska’s record jumps in February and March, when males leave their dens and range widely in search of mates, then climbs again in May as warm nights bring the year’s best insect hunting. Even midwinter keeps a trickle of records, a sign of how lightly this animal sleeps through a plains winter.
Status in Nebraska
NatureServe ranks the striped skunk S5, Secure, in Nebraska, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
