Standing up for a native rodent

Forest and Bird, Issue 281, 1 August 1996, Page 11

Standing up for a native rodent

THE PRAIRIE DOG or native ground squirrel of the US Great Plains has become the focal point of a clash between old and new values in the American West. Traditionally regarded as vermin that ruin grazing land and decimate crops, the 30centimetre rodents (a number of species of the genus Cynomys) have been the target of eradication campaigns by government agencies and property owners during most of the last 100 years. But today, conservationists point out that prairie dog colonies are critical to the survival of more than 100 species, including rare burrowing owls, swift foxes, mountain plovers, golden eagles and endangered blackfooted ferrets. "The prairie dog is to the prairie what krill is to the ocean," says Jasper Carlton, of the Biodiversity Legal Foundation in Boulder, Colorado. "We are wiping out a

major ecosystem." The eradication programmes coupled with plague outbreaks have taken a toll. Once spread over 40 million hectares, prairie dogs today are concentrated in pockets on less than a million hectares of short-grass prairie, from western Texas to eastern Montana, and across to the Dakotas. Many cattle ranchers regard prairie dogs as an expensive pest that munches grazing land down to scrub and digs holes that can cripple horses. Farmers claim dirt mounds around the burrowing holes trip up their farm equipment, and the animals supposedly wreak havoc on crops of corn, sunflower and alfalfa. With their network of underground tunnels, prairie dogs also cause subsidence problems under highways. In Wyoming, landowners are free to shoot, poison or firebomb prairie dogs at will, notes Bob Luce, a biologist with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. "You can do whatever you want to do to them, whenever you want to do it." Some farmers invite gun enthusiasts onto their land to shoot the prairie dogs. The sport is becoming so popular that enterprising ranchers can charge shooters for the privilege. Rural towns promote prairie dog "derbies" — day-long shooting competitions — to boost tourism and attract revenue. Ecologists say much of the bias against prairie dogs reflects a lack of understanding. "People in the West are still waging a war on the West — they want to subdue nature," says Luce. "They don’t realise that there’s a whole ecosystem complex built around prairie dog habitat."