Skunks on Long Island are rare, but do exist, experts say

Despite fears to the contrary, skunks — cat-sized, striped mammals armed with a notoriously potent defense — have not vanished from Long Island after all.

Believed to have largely disappeared from the Island a century ago, in recent years a small number of the animals have been spotted on trail cameras or found by the sides of roads, the victims of motorists.

“They are like Long Island Sasquatch, a little smaller but close to as rare,” said Kevin Walsh, a naturalist and wildlife photographer who teaches fourth-graders in Mount Sinai.

‘None of us have ever seen one’

In his 1971 survey, “The Mammals of Long Island, New York,” naturalist Paul F. Connor noted a prominent self-taught naturalist, Roy Latham, told him “the skunk was one of the more common mammals discovered in his Indian archaeological excavations on eastern Long Island, found at most sites, as were muskrat, raccoon, deer, beaver, and wolf.”

But Long Island’s reliance on potatoes — which by the 1940s dominated its farms — might have doomed its skunks.

Paris green poison, a highly toxic insecticide imported around the 1890s to kill off Colorado potato beetles, also could have killed skunks, which eat insects, Connor said.

By the early 1900s, skunks had nearly disappeared from the Island, although some remained in areas where the insecticide was not used.

“Skunks seemed to remain common much longer in certain wilder, nonagricultural sections, such as Montauk and in pine-oak barrens, but have gradually become scarce there, too,” Connor noted.

Skunks also fell prey to trappers and hunters, as their glossy coats, which could easily be dyed all black, were prized by furriers.

“Most Long Island biologists thought they had been extirpated, trapped and hunted out of existence — and none of us have ever seen one,” said Mike Bottini, wildlife biologist at Seatuck Environmental Association in Islip.

Demand for skunk fur has fallen since the 1930s and 1940s, though some are still farmed. 

Viability uncertain

The scarcity of striped skunks on Long Island sets it apart from its neighbors in the region, where the slow-moving insect-eaters are fairly common, with few predators — excluding the ones with wheels.

Skunks “provide a great service to us by eating a lot of pest insects,” said Luanne Johnson, a wildlife biologist at BioDiversity Works, a Martha’s Vineyard nonprofit. They also excel at catching mice, which can spread Lyme disease if they carry infected ticks.

On Long Island, a Manorville roadkill in the early 2000s was one of the few proofs any wild skunks — generally elusive night foragers — remained.

“We do know they are hanging around, but we really don’t know if it’s a viable population,” Bottini said.

Naturalist John L. Turner, 67, who co-founded the Long Island Pine Barrens Society, is one of the few Long Islanders to have seen a skunk out in the daytime. 

That was in the Pine Barrens, a few years after the mid-1990s wildfires cleared out scrub oaks, whose rotting stumps delighted termites. Turner came upon a skunk who was “lapping” them up.

“It turned its rump toward me,” Turner said, and began stamping its front paws — a sign it was about to release that dreaded spray. “I ran back about 30 or 40 feet and stopped. The skunk went back to eating” before ambling off.

In the last 5 to 10 years, skunks have been seen on the North Shore in Northport, the Fort Salonga area, and Commack. In Smithtown, a baby skunk was rescued from a swimming pool ladder in July 2021 and rehabilitated by the Sweetbriar Nature Center.

“He did grumpily spray us when he got examined by Sweetbriar,” said Leigh Wixson, animal shelter supervisor at the Smithtown Animal Shelter, which plucked him out of the pool.

And in March 2019, "Casper," a pure-white skunk, was photographed by one of Walsh's trail cameras out east.

Skunks prefer open fields, one reason they are more likely to be found out east, explained Leslie Lupo, wildlife biologist with the state Department of Conservation. Suburbanites may also see signs they have been digging for grubs and the like in their yards.

Long Islanders might also be encountering more skunks, biologists say, because the pandemic pushed city dwellers to the suburbs.

“People are often surprised to hear we have skunks on Long Island,” Lupo said. “We most often learn about them when they are hit by cars.”