Prairie Dog Decline Spurs Efforts to Protect Species

Reported by Bill Kelly, Statewide Correspondent

Prairie dogs talk to each other a lot. In fact, they have 11 separate barks to keep each other informed of what's happening around town. Their communities sprawl for acres. Sometimes hundreds of thousands of them live in towns that can stretch for hundreds of miles.
[Julie Savidge, UNL biologist] "They're actually extremely interesting creatures. They're very, very social. They live in family groups that are actually pretty complex. They have a lot of communication between each other, a lot of grooming that goes on so they're fun. They're an obvious animal. They're easy to observe."
That's what makes them fascinating for Julie Savidge, a biologist with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln but she also knows they can be incredibly aggravating for ranchers. Look at what they do to the ground. Dozens of holes create booby traps for cattle snapping their legs. When they dig their holes, the dirt they push out covers up valuable grasses and cuts back on the amount of feed available for grazing. Until recently the State of Nebraska required by law that prairie dogs be killed. Today the Extension Service still teaches people how to poison them. The Game and Parks Commission doesn't even require a permit to shoot them. Dr. Savidge says that controlled killing has had its desired effect. Her studies of prairie dogs and the species that rely on them for their own survival have seen a dramatic decline.
[Julie Savidge, UNL biologist]"There is still a lot of prairie dogs out, there but when you consider what we had historically, there's been a dramatic decline."
That unfinished sentence says a lot. Some environmentalists and the National Wildlife Federation in particular are convinced the prairie dog has become an endangered species even while millions still roam the great plains. First of all, some of the research says that the numbers of the prairie dogs, for better or worse, have been reduced by 98% since 1,900. There are concerns about protecting the prairie dog that go beyond the numbers. There are some other species whose well-being, even their very survival, appears to be inseparable from the number of prairie dogs. Randy Griebel is a graduate student studying the habits of the burrowing owl. They are a unique bird because they live -- actually take over the burrows dug by prairie dogs so that's where Randy puts his live traps.
[Randy Griebel, biology researcher] A piece of duct tape on a one-way opening door so basically I stick that into the burrow and they can go out it but they can't go back in and then I have this chicken wire I just stick right there on top of it.
He entered this field of study reluctantly but now he has learned how engaging this burrowing owl can be.
Yeah, they're fun. They're a blast. I think they're great to study. they're really charismatic and animated.
His study hopes to provide information on how the owls exist within the prairie dog colony, specifically how many owls can be supported within a given size colony. Randy and his assistant weigh and measure and take a blood sample. Adding colored leg bands allows the data collection to go on for years.
[Griebel] I will be using that next year when everything migrates back and nests. If I see an adult try to go nest with color bands I will just look newspaper the records and I will be able to tell what nest that came from, what prairie dog town that came from.
There are some early indications in Randy's research, still unproven, that the burrowing owls may need large prairie dog colonies to survive and prosper.
[Griebel] If this was all wiped out, no, you wouldn't see any burrowing owls out here at all.
What has been proven in part by the research of Julie Savidge is that when the prairie dogs are killed off in an area, the burrowing owls disappear as well.
[Savidge] It's a 60-some% decline in burrowing owl numbers over the time period we studied the owls which is a pretty dramatic drop.
Is it alarming to you?
[Savidge] Yeah, we're very concerned about the owl drop, mm-hmm, definitely. Owls can't -- they can't come back quite as quickly as prairie dogs can.
It's not known how many burrowing owls are left in North America. In some areas they seem to be disappearing at an alarming rate. You may already have heard about the black-footed ferret. Beyond endangered, this ferret was down to the last couple of animals on earth before biologists stepped in and started breeding them in captivity. Now there's a program underway to release them back into protected prairie dog colonies in the hopes they can sustain their own population from now on.
[Dean Biggins, U.S. Geological Survey/BRD] The black-footed ferret probably tops the list of animals that are dependent on prairie dogs. They use the prairie dog burrows for their refuge from predators that take them and, of course, prairie dogs are the main food supply for black-footed ferrets. Over 90% of their diet is prairie dog and so they're really tightly linked. Haven't really been found anywhere but with prairie dogs.
Biologist Dean Biggins leads the effort to coax the black-footed ferret community back from near extinction. Working with the U.S. Geological Survey, Biological Resources Division he works out of a battered trailer on the edge of a prairie dog colony. His assistants spend the day trapping prairie dogs and putting electronic transmitters on them so they can be tracked on his radio system.
[Biggins] A receiver is searching for signals coming from the radio tag prairie dogs out on this prairie dog town.
Homegrown ferrets released here this Fall will also be tracked electronically. It has been obvious to biologists that ferrets nearly disappeared because there are fewer prairie dogs.
[Biggins] Overall, the picture looks pretty bleak because we're down to perhaps 1-5% of the prairie dogs that were here historically by common estimates at least, so prairie dogs are pretty rare compared to what was once present on the great plains.
An official federal government decree making prairie dogs endangered could take years to sort out. In the meantime the U.S. Forest Service and Park Service intend on setting aside more of the land they control specifically for the prairie dog. It's a way of protecting the species without new rules for private land owners.
[Rancher]"We got prairie dogs all over the place and I don't understand why that would be."
The new Forest Service Land Management Plan under consideration would significantly enlarge the acres set aside protecting prairie dog colonies in South Dakota and Nebraska.
Through the Endangered Species Act, we're going to do all we can to help recover threatened and endangered species so most of it is driven at following that act.
In this case since the ferret needs the prairie dog, the Forest Service protects the colonies on its land to assure there are places for the ferret to live across North America. Ranchers who attended this briefing session were beside themselves at the thought that anything was being done to protect one of their most bothersome pests.
[Rancher]"And I'm not out to destroy the prairie dogs. I like 'em. They're a neat animal and I like the animals that are associated with them -- burrowing owls, for instance. But you just can't let them get out of control any more than you can let grasshoppers get out of control or mice at home or whatever. These are a pest."
Forest Service staff explained that the preferred plan there would be no real affect on prairie dog colonies in the nearby Nebraska National Forest. The only protected area in Nebraska would be at the Oglala grasslands in the northwest corner of the panhandle, an increase of 55,000 acres of prairie dog colonies on federal land. That raised a red flag for Barbara Cooksly, the chair of the Natural Resources Committee of the Nebraska Cattlemen's Association.
[Barbara Cooksly] "And I said is 55,000 your top number? Does it stop there? I said if the prairie dogs -- they don't do math. Doesn't stop there. If they decide to expand, do you stop it there? And he said maybe."
There is a dislike for them especially from the livestock industry. If you're going to have to have them, have them on federal land not private, ok.
A number of researchers believe setting aside some federal land and providing some incentives to private landowners might be enough to strike a balance to protect the prairie dog and the species that rely on them.
[Savidge] We can still preserve this species through say, conservation plans that may maybe encourage this species on public land and perhaps offer some sorts of incentives to ranchers that are willing to allow or maintain prairie dogs on their land, maybe conservation easements.
Randy Griebel may be a biologist but he also grew up on a ranch outside Broken Bow and he knows how his family feels about prairie dogs.
[Griebel] Oh, they're kind of a pain in the rear and, you know, we -- we always went out and shot them. My uncle and grandparents always poisoned the heck out of them but didn't have much luck.
But on those evenings when he is holding one of those owl chicks, he sees a species that needs some help.
[Griebel] You know, I kind of bond with them a little bit. I didn't know they were such a cute little bird until I started getting up close with them. You look at them and they're just cute as heck. Yeah, that's definitely kind of -- I would say it's affected me definitely.
In his radio shack house trailer, ferret researcher Dean Biggins says he has to look at the big picture.
[Biggins] I do think that every species that is present on the planet has a role and is important. That would be my philosophy on it.
The prairie dog does have a role and it's likely to get some kind of special treatment in years to come. The question is can it be done in a way that satisfies the people who view them as nothing more than a destructive pest?

Captioning by Nebraska Captioning Center, Lincoln, Nebraska .