Striped skunks are Texas’s most widely recorded skunk species, with nearly 7,800 sightings tracing the wooded Brazos and Trinity river corridors and Caddo National Grasslands, where riverbanks, pasture edges, and roadside cover give this opportunistic forager both denning sites and easy access to insects, small rodents, and carrion.
Records carry two peaks rather than one, February and a second rise in October, bracketing a summer that stays reasonably well represented rather than dropping off sharply. That double signal likely tracks late-winter breeding movement and fall dispersal of young skunks striking out on their own. NatureServe rates the species secure both in Texas and across its full range, and its black-and-white warning pattern remains one of the most recognizable field marks of any Texas mammal.
Full species profile
