Endangered Species in the Field Guide

This medium-sized turtle has an oval, moderately high-domed upper shell and a long head and neck.

This pale, very slender darter is Endangered in Missouri. Formerly known from many river drainages in the east-central and southeastern parts of our state, it apparently now lives only in the Gasconade and Black rivers.

A big river floodplain species, the decurrent false aster has declined as wetlands have been drained and converted to agricultural crop production.

At one time the most valuable shell to the commercial button industry, the ebonyshell is now classified as Endangered in Missouri and is a candidate for federal Endangered status.

This active, big-river fish formerly occurred along the entire length of the Missouri River. In the 1940s, it constituted 31 percent of all small fishes in the Missouri River! By the early 1980s, that figure was 1.1 percent. Today, it has all but vanished from our state.

One of the rarest darters in our state, the endangered goldstripe has exacting habitat requirements: It needs small, shallow, shaded, spring-fed streams with clear water and a low to moderate gradient. What it doesn’t need is siltation, pollution, channel restriction and removal of the tree canopy above!

The gray wolf originally ranged throughout Missouri, but with settlement the species was gradually exterminated. While there is no evidence of a breeding population in the state, wolves are listed as a protected species in Missouri, and they occasionally wander into Missouri from northern states.

In Missouri, this rare darter is found only in our southeastern lowlands. It lives in flowing streams and ditches with sandy bottoms among logs, sticks and other organic debris. It is State Endangered because its small numbers and limited range make it vulnerable to extirpation.

Indiana bats summer along streams and rivers in north Missouri, raising their young under bark of certain trees. They are listed as endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the state of Missouri.

Originally, this water bird lived on islands, beaches and sandbars in big rivers, but as these areas have become rare, least terns have been forced to “make do” with dredge islands, dikefields, sandpits and gravel roads atop levees. Because of their habitat loss, they are now endangered.

This shy, reclusive, nonaggressive rattlesnake used to live in floodplain wetlands of the Mississippi, Missouri and Grand rivers, but as those wetlands have been drained and destroyed, the massasauga has disappeared with them. Now it is an endangered species.

This semiaquatic snake was once somewhat common in southeastern Missouri but is now probably extirpated. A heavy-bodied snake, it is greenish-brown with numerous small, obscure brown markings. The belly is dark gray with numerous, yellow half-moon-shaped markings. Watersnakes, although not venomous, do bite viciously to defend themselves and also secret a strong-smelling musk from glands at the base of the tail.

This small catfish is rare and endangered in Missouri. It has been recorded from only a few locations in the southeastern portion of the state.

Two small, jet-black spots at the base of the tail fin distinguish this small fish from the more than 30 other darters found in our state. Known from only a few tributaries of the Osage River, this dainty and colorful fish is a nationally threatened species.

Similar to shovelnose sturgeon, but with a longer and more pointed snout. Bases of the inner barbels are weakly fringed, and the base of an inner barbel is less than half the width of the base of an outer barbel.

This endangered native mussel lives in flowing waters of large streams among gravel and cobble.

One of the rarest darters in Missouri is part of a highly distinctive fish community living in the lower Spring River and its North Fork, in Jasper and Barton counties. Just as the landscape transitions from prairie to Ozarks, the stream character changes, there, too.

Missouri’s southeastern lowlands are home to a fantastic array of plants and animals found nowhere else in the state. The Sabine shiner is one of them—in Missouri, it’s known only from a short stretch of the Black River in Butler County.

The sheepnose has been classified as Endangered in Missouri and is a candidate for federal Endangered status.

This is the only cavefish in our state that has eyes, however small, and whose body is yellowish-brown or brown; our other cavefishes lack eyes entirely and are pale and nearly colorless.

One of the rarest Missouri minnows, the taillight shiner is known only from a few localities in Southeast Missouri—in habitats representing the last remnants of low-gradient streams and swamps that once characterized that region.

This is a small-to medium-sized turtle with an oval shell and extremely long neck.