Missouri Department of Conservation

This large, ground-nesting sparrow is listed as Endangered in Missouri, where its historic habitat is in decline.

Mudminnows are a small family of only six species and are most closely related to the pikes. This is the only mudminnow that occurs in our state, and it is rare, occurring only in a few marshy locations near the Mississippi River.

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.

There are two species of skunks in Missouri, the more familiar striped skunk and the lesser-known spotted skunk. The spotted skunk is also called a civet cat, but this name is misleading and incorrect because this mammal is not closely related to the true civets of the Old World or to cats.

Today found only in the Meramec River, the elephantear has been 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.

This is one of the two broad categories of aquatic snails in Missouri (the other is the pulmonate snails, which breathe via a lunglike organ). Prosobranch snails breathe with gills, and they also possess a hard trapdoor-like operculum. They are most commonly encountered in the Ozarks.

Gray bats are difficult to distinguish from little brown bats and Indiana bats. The key identifying feature of the gray bat is that its wing is attached to the ankle and not at the base of the toes.

Biologists are studying certain cave-dwelling populations of banded sculpin that have adapted in dramatic ways to cave conditions. They may soon determine that these “grotto sculpins” deserve their own scientific name.

Our state flower, the hawthorn, is solidly represented in Missouri. There are about 100 different kinds of hawthorn that occupy almost every kind of soil in every part of the state. A member of the rose family, it is closely related to the apple.

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.

The fastest living animal, this bird can dive at speeds of up to 261 miles per hour! It is currently being reintroduced to the state in urban areas, where skyscrapers replace the cliffs it traditionally nested on.

Also called southern spicebush, this colony-forming shrub grows in swampy depressions in lowland forests. It is an Endangered species. In Missouri, only one population occurs, in southern Ripley County.

This perennial spreads by sending out long, creeping runners. Now endangered, it once flourished along streams and buffalo trails throughout the grasslands of the eastern and central United States.

Rarely seen, this Endangered freshwater mussel has a thin and delicate shell that is strikingly beautiful inside.

Because it so closely resembles the endangered pallid sturgeon, the shovelnose sturgeon is treated as an endangered species, and it is illegal to harvest it for commercial purposes in Missouri.

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.

Turbellarians become the favorites of almost everyone who has taken the time to observe them. Unlike their parasitic cousins in the flatworm group, turbellarians are tiny carnivores or detritus-eaters that glide smoothly across submerged leaves and other objects.

This showy fringed orchid of Missouri’s western prairies is endangered and known only from a few northwestern locations. Learn why this native wildflower is special, and why it’s so important to preserve our remaining tallgrass prairies.

This is a small, dark-colored, semiaquatic turtle with a restricted range. It is an Endangered species in Missouri.