The Animals Of Nebraska

Section 01

Half A Million Cranes And The Largest Sand Dunes In The Hemisphere

Nebraska has two claims that put it in a different category from its neighbours. The first is the Platte River, where each spring roughly 80 percent of the world's sandhill cranes, something on the order of half a million to a million birds, stop on a short stretch of braided river channel to rest and feed before continuing to Arctic and subarctic breeding grounds. It is one of the largest concentrations of any bird species on Earth.

The second is the Sand Hills, roughly 20,000 square miles of grass-stabilised sand dunes covering a quarter of the state. It is the largest dune field in the western hemisphere, and because it cannot be ploughed without the sand blowing away, it survived as ranchland. Nebraska therefore holds an enormous, largely intact grassland in a region where nearly everything else was converted.

Beneath the Sand Hills sits the Ogallala Aquifer at its thickest, and the water table is high enough that thousands of shallow lakes and wet meadows sit between the dunes. That combination of dry sand and abundant water makes the Sand Hills unusually productive for wetland birds in the middle of dry prairie.

The rest of the state is a rainfall gradient, from around 30 inches in the southeast where tallgrass prairie and eastern woodland once met, to under 16 in the panhandle where shortgrass, pine ridge, and badlands take over. Nebraska's fauna shifts entirely across that line.

Section 02

Nebraska's Official State Animals

Given the Platte River crane spectacle, the absence of a crane among the symbols is notable. The western meadowlark, chosen in 1929, is shared with several other plains states, and Nebraska has no state reptile, amphibian, or butterfly.

Section 03

The Platte River Crane Migration

This deserves its own section because it is the single most significant wildlife event in the interior United States.

Each February through early April, sandhill cranes arriving from wintering grounds in Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico funnel into a roughly 80-mile stretch of the central Platte between Grand Island and Kearney. They roost at night standing in shallow braided channels where the water is only inches deep and the sandbars give them a clear view of approaching predators. By day they feed in surrounding cornfields and wet meadows, converting waste grain and invertebrates into fat.

Cranes gain roughly ten percent of their body weight during the stopover, and that fat determines whether they can breed successfully thousands of miles north. The Platte is not optional habitat; it is a refuelling bottleneck for most of a continental population.

The problem is that the river has been transformed. Upstream dams and irrigation diversions have reduced peak flows dramatically, and without scouring floods, willows and cottonwoods colonise the sandbars, narrowing the channel and closing the open roosting habitat cranes need. Conservation now involves mechanically clearing vegetation, purchasing water rights to restore flows, and managing wet meadows.

Section 04

Habitats By Region, And Who Lives In Each

1. The Sand Hills

Grass-stabilised dunes with thousands of interdunal lakes and wet meadows, covering roughly a quarter of the state. Species include greater prairie-chicken and sharp-tailed grouse, which sometimes hybridise where they overlap, plus black-tailed prairie dog, badger, pronghorn, blue sucker in the rivers, and the endemic Sand Hills tiger beetle. Alkaline lakes in the west hold unusual invertebrates and breeding shorebirds.

2. Platte, Republican, and Niobrara river valleys

Braided channels, sandbars, wet meadows, and cottonwood galleries. Beyond the cranes, these rivers hold interior least tern and piping plover nesting on sandbars, plus bald eagles wintering and beaver and river otter recolonising. The Niobrara is a biological crossroads where six distinct ecosystems meet, with eastern deciduous forest, boreal relict paper birch, ponderosa pine, and both tallgrass and mixed-grass prairie within a few miles.

3. Eastern tallgrass prairie and Missouri River bluffs

Loess hills and remnant tallgrass in the southeast, plus Missouri River bottomland. White-tailed deer, bobcat, coyote, wild turkey, and eastern woodland birds reach their western limit here. Rainwater Basin wetlands in the south-central region are critical spring waterfowl staging.

4. Panhandle, Pine Ridge, and badlands

Shortgrass prairie, ponderosa pine escarpments, and eroded badlands in the northwest. This region holds species found nowhere else in the state: mountain lion, which recolonised the Pine Ridge from the Black Hills and now forms Nebraska's only breeding population, plus bighorn sheep reintroduced to the escarpments, elk, swift fox, and prairie rattlesnake.

5. Rainwater Basin

Shallow playa wetlands in south-central Nebraska, most now drained, with the remainder hosting one of the continent's densest spring waterfowl concentrations. Millions of ducks and geese, including a large share of the mid-continent white-fronted goose population, stop here on the same schedule as the cranes.

Section 05

Mammals Of Nebraska

• White-tailed deer: the state mammal, abundant statewide, restored after near-elimination.
• Mule deer: in the west and the Sand Hills, declining in some areas as whitetails expand.
• Pronghorn: in the panhandle and western Sand Hills.
• Elk: extirpated and now re-established as a small wild population in the northwest, with a limited hunt.
• Bighorn sheep: reintroduced to the Pine Ridge and Wildcat Hills escarpments after extirpation.
• Mountain lion: Nebraska's only large predator recovery. Lions recolonised the Pine Ridge from the Black Hills in the 1990s, the state confirmed breeding in 2007, and a small population now persists with a carefully limited season. This has been politically contentious in a ranching state.
• Bison: conservation herds at Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge and the Nature Conservancy's Niobrara Valley Preserve rather than free-ranging animals. Related: state parks where bison still roam.
• Black-footed ferret: reintroduced on prairie dog colonies, entirely dependent on them for food and shelter.
• Bobcat, coyote, red and swift fox, badger, river otter (reintroduced and recovered), mink, weasels, striped and spotted skunk, raccoon, opossum, beaver, muskrat, thirteen-lined ground squirrel, black-tailed jackrabbit, eastern cottontail: all present.
• Bats: 13 species, with northern long-eared bat federally endangered. See where bats live.

Gone: gray wolf, grizzly bear, and free-ranging bison, all eliminated in the 19th century. Wolves occasionally disperse into the state and are usually killed.

Section 06

Birds Of Nebraska

More than 460 species have been recorded, an unusually high total for a landlocked plains state, driven by the Central Flyway and the Platte.

• Cranes: sandhill cranes in the hundreds of thousands each spring, plus whooping cranes from the only naturally occurring wild flock.
• Waterfowl: Rainwater Basin staging in the millions, with mallard, northern pintail, white-fronted and snow geese, and a large share of the mid-continent population passing through in a few weeks.
• Prairie grouse: greater prairie-chicken and sharp-tailed grouse both display on Sand Hills leks, and Nebraska is one of the best places in the country to see both species in one trip.
• Sandbar nesters: interior least tern and piping plover nest on river sandbars and in sand and gravel pits, and Nebraska's populations were central to the interior least tern's recovery and 2021 delisting.
• Grassland songbirds: western meadowlark (the state bird), plus grasshopper, Cassin's, lark, and Henslow's sparrows, dickcissel, bobolink, upland sandpiper, and long-billed curlew.
• Western and eastern overlap: the Platte and Niobrara valleys are where eastern and western forms meet, and Nebraska is a well-known place to find hybrid zones, including between Baltimore and Bullock's orioles, indigo and lazuli buntings, and rose-breasted and black-headed grosbeaks.

Section 07

Reptiles, Amphibians, And Fish

Nebraska has around 30 reptile and 13 amphibian species. Four snakes are venomous.

Snakes: about 26 species. The venomous four are prairie rattlesnake in the west, timber rattlesnake in the southeast, western massasauga, and copperhead in the far southeast. Also bullsnake, western hognose, plains garter snake, and the glossy snake.

Turtles and lizards: ornate box turtle, yellow mud turtle, Blanding's turtle in the Sand Hills, plus painted, map, and snapping turtles and softshells. Lizards include lesser earless, six-lined racerunner, prairie skink, and short-horned lizard.

Amphibians: tiger salamander, plains spadefoot, Great Plains toad, Woodhouse's toad, northern leopard frog, plains leopard frog, and boreal chorus frog. Sand Hills wetlands are important amphibian habitat.

Fish: roughly 100 species. Channel catfish is the state fish. Pallid sturgeon in the Missouri is federally endangered, and the Topeka shiner and Sand Hills-endemic populations of some minnows are of concern. Blue suckers, paddlefish, and sturgeon chub occupy the larger rivers, and irrigation withdrawal that dries prairie streams is the main threat to small stream fish.

Section 08

Dangerous Animals In Nebraska

• White-tailed deer: the most dangerous animal in the state, causing many thousands of vehicle collisions annually.
• Venomous snakes: four species, all uncommon. The prairie rattlesnake in western canyons and river breaks accounts for most bites.
• Mountain lion: the Pine Ridge population is small and attacks are extremely rare, but it is the state's only large predator.
• Brown recluse and black widow spiders: both present, mainly in the east and south.
• Ticks: Rocky Mountain spotted fever, ehrlichiosis, and tularemia occur, and lone star ticks are expanding north.
• Bison: relevant at refuges and preserves. They injure more people in US parks than bears do and should be given wide space.
• Cattle and weather: livestock injuries and severe weather including tornadoes and blizzards cause far more harm than Nebraska wildlife.

Section 09

Endangered And Protected Species

The Salt Creek tiger beetle is among the rarest insects in North America, confined to a few saline wetlands near Lincoln, a habitat type that has been reduced to a small fraction of its original extent by development. Its entire wild population has at times numbered only a few hundred adults.

Nebraska's dominant pressures are water and grassland. Irrigation withdrawal from the Ogallala and upstream diversion reduce river flows, which both dries prairie streams and lets vegetation close the Platte's open channels. Grassland conversion continues in the east, and woody encroachment by eastern redcedar spreading into unburned grassland is converting prairie to scrub across large areas. Prairie dog control removes the keystone that ferrets and burrowing owls need.

Section 10

Where To See Wildlife In Nebraska

• Central Platte River, Grand Island to Kearney: the sandhill crane migration from blinds at the Crane Trust and Rowe Sanctuary, booked well in advance for March.
• Rainwater Basin wetlands: millions of staging waterfowl in late February and March.
• Valentine National Wildlife Refuge: Sand Hills lakes with grouse leks, waterfowl, and prairie species.
• Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge: bison, elk, and the Niobrara River's ecological crossroads.
• Niobrara Valley Preserve: bison and six converging ecosystems in a few miles.
• Pine Ridge and Fort Robinson: bighorn sheep, elk, mountain lion country, and ponderosa escarpments.
• Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park: not living wildlife, but the best window anywhere into what Nebraska's fauna used to be.
• Oglala National Grassland and Toadstool Park: badlands, swift fox, and shortgrass birds.