Indian Country Today
In June, a consortium of Native Americans, ranchers, environmentalists,
and federal and state wildlife biologists visited with senators and
congressmen from Western states asking for U.S. $115 million to restore
and protect black-tailed prairie dog habitat on 830,000 acres (336,000
hectares) of private and tribal lands.
Much of the money would be
used to pay landowners to refrain from poisoning or allowing commercial
shooting of prairie dogs on their property over the next decade. Grazing
livestock would be still permitted, plus, nuisance animals could be
removed. First year costs of $17 million would protect about 267,000
acres (108,000 hectares).
"It's a true win-win situation for all of the prairie dwellers—wildlife and humans alike," said Bob Luce, interstate coordinator for the 11-state Black-tailed Prairie Dog Conservation Team.
The Farm Bill, up for reauthorization in 2002, or other bills introduced this year, could provide funding.
Biologists estimate that foot-high (30 centimeters) prairie dog burrows once threw their shadows across an estimated quarter of the 400 million acres (160 million hectares) of grass that comprised the Great Plains. As bison were slaughtered and the cattle industry expanded, ranchers accused the rodent of eating grass earmarked for livestock.
Their digging occasionally undermined fence posts, and more recently, they sometimes chew through underground cables. The prairie dog can harbor fleas that transmit bubonic plague to humans.
Today, biologists estimate the football-sized rodent has been confined to less than one million acres (400,000 hectares) , or one percent of its historic range.
Other species that live in or around the unique prairie dog ecosystem have diminished along with the prairie dog population. These creatures may seek shelter or nest in rodent burrows and tunnels, eat the prairie dogs or easily find other prey in the trimmed grasses of the towns.
Help for the prairie dogs should help bolster populations of sensitive species like the burrowing owl, mountain plover, prairie falcon, swift fox, golden eagle—and the black-footed ferret, one of the rarest animals on earth, biologists say.
In 1998, after being sued by three conservation groups, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared the black-tailed prairie dog warranted protection as an endangered species but the agency could do nothing for it because it lacked funding, and other species took a higher priority. With that breathing space, 11 Great Plains states began forming their own conservation plans.
Only six complexes, or groups of colonies, of black-tailed prairie dogs of more than 5,000 acres (2,000 hectares) are known to exist in the United States, plus one in Mexico. Two exist on National Grasslands in South Dakota and Wyoming. Four are on reservations.
The reason so many prairie dog towns survived on tribal lands was not from Native American religious or social values, but from federal neglect of tribes, said Mike Fox, director of the Native American Fish and Wildlife Society in Denver, Colorado.
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