Prairie dogs are among the most maligned and persecuted animal species in the Western U.S.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Though black-tailed prairie dogs have a long-standing reputation as pests, their ingenious tunnel systems and industrious prairie pruning make them one of the West\u2019s primary ecosystem engineers. Some researchers call them the \u201cchicken nuggets of the prairie\u201d; if a prairie species eats meat, it almost certainly eats prairie dogs. Without prairie dogs, black-footed ferrets would never survive outside zoos and breeding facilities, and we would have far fewer mountain plovers<\/a>, burrowing owls<\/a>, swift foxes, and ferruginous hawks<\/a>.<\/p>\n Before 1800, an estimated 5 billion prairie dogs<\/a> lived from Canada to Mexico, covering the West with underground apartment complexes that shifted over the centuries like sand dunes. The Lakota, Dakota and other Indigenous peoples of the prairie shaped and depended on the ecosystems prairie dogs created. Some relied on prairie dogs for nourishment during thin times, or used them as a ceremonial food.<\/p>\n But European settlers were remarkably effective at shooting and poisoning prairie dogs and plowing up their burrows. Today, the five prairie dog species occupy just 2% of their historic range, and some occupy even less.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n Prairie dogs still survive in many of their historic territories: Black-tailed prairie dogs, known for their especially large, dense colonies, persist in isolated pockets of the prairie east of the Rocky Mountains from Canada to Mexico<\/a>. White-tailed prairie dogs live in parts of Montana, Wyoming, Utah and Colorado. Gunnison\u2019s prairie dogs eke out an existence in southern Colorado, and Utah prairie dogs live in, well, Utah. Mexican prairie dogs still hang on in small slices of northern Mexico. But many of these populations are too small to serve their ecosystems as they once did.<\/p>\n Within this familiar story of colonization and species decline, however, are more hopeful stories of creativity and adaptation: Researchers are using pedometer-like devices to map prairie dogs\u2019 underground tunnels, remote-controlled badgers to understand prairie dog alarm calls and Kitchen-Aid mixers to craft solutions to deadly disease. After decades of restoration work by tribal wildlife managers, prairie dogs, black-footed ferrets, swift foxes and bison are once again roaming the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in north-central Montana, one of the few places in the world where all four species coexist. Some private landowners, meanwhile, are finding ways to tolerate the rodents. Together, these researchers, managers and landowners are striving to conserve the West\u2019s remaining prairie dogs and the prairie that depends on them.<\/p>\n ONCE THE COLLARED<\/strong> prairie dog was returned to her Tru Catch wire cage to await release, Boulerice reached into the next trap in line.<\/p>\n Boulerice is part of a team from the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute that is collaring and tracking prairie dogs at American Prairie \u2014 formerly the American Prairie Reserve \u2014 in central Montana. Each collar measures the animal\u2019s acceleration and angle; by triangulating with locations picked up by sensors posted on poles throughout the colony, researchers can determine where and how far the prairie dogs travel both above and below ground. The Clairol dye patterns provide one more way to tell who\u2019s who in a colony of look-alikes.<\/p>\n Though other researchers have studied prairie dogs\u2019 aboveground lives, no one really knows what they do underground. Satellite imagery can be used to track Arctic terns over Alaska or grizzly bears deep in the wilderness, but it can\u2019t penetrate the Earth. Decades ago, researchers laboriously excavated a white-tailed prairie dog burrow in southern Montana, revealing features like \u201csleeping quarters,\u201d hibernacula, and a \u201cmaternity area\u201d<\/a> \u2014 but such work is invasive and yields little data on the animals\u2019 movements.<\/p>\n At American Prairie in September, the Smithsonian team was joined by researchers from Swansea University in Wales who had developed the tracking collars Boulerice used. The collars were originally designed to study penguins underwater, an environment similarly resistant to conventional satellite tracking.<\/p>\n READ MORE<\/p>\n Find out how bison were the first farmers of America’s prairies.<\/p>\n Prairie dogs aren\u2019t the only occupants of prairie dog burrows. The mazes of tunnels and rooms also provide shelter for black-footed ferrets, swift foxes and untold numbers of insects. Burrowing owls shimmy their puffball bodies into the tunnels, where they raise their chicks on the plentiful bugs. Prairie rattlesnakes, tiger salamanders, horned lizards and badgers use them, too.\u00a0And as climate extremes become more common aboveground, these burrows may become even more important.<\/p>\n \u201cBy creating tunnels, they\u2019re also creating a thermal refuge,\u201d said Hila Shamon, the director of the Smithsonian\u2019s Great Plains Science Program and principal investigator of the colony-mapping project. \u201cThe prairie can be so hot in the summer or brutally, brutally cold in the winter. You don\u2019t have any shade or place to hide from the cold \u2026 and conditions in the tunnel systems are consistent.\u201d<\/p>\n Prairie dogs spend much of the day and all night in their burrows, living in family coteries<\/a> composed of one male, three or four females and the year\u2019s young. Their tunnel systems, which can extend across an area larger than\u00a0 a football field, are like bustling apartment complexes where every family has its separate unit. Residents periodically pop out of doors to grab food, gossip about the neighbors and scan for danger.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the prairie,\u201d Shamon said, \u201cthere\u2019s a whole world that\u2019s happening beneath the ground that we can\u2019t see. But it exists, and it\u2019s very deep, and it\u2019s important.\u201d<\/p>\n Aboveground, the effect of prairie dogs on the landscape is more obvious. \u201cPrairie dogs create an entirely novel habitat type,\u201d said Andy Boyce, a Smithsonian research ecologist. \u201cThey graze intensely. They increase the forbs and flowering plants, and they clip woody vegetation. They will eat and nibble on a new woody plant until it tips over and dies.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn the prairie, there\u2019s a whole world that\u2019s happening beneath the ground that we can\u2019t see, but it exists, and it\u2019s very deep, and it\u2019s important.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The landscape created by prairie dogs may look barren, but the reality is more nuanced. A healthy prairie isn\u2019t an uninterrupted sea of grass; it\u2019s\u00a0 made up of grass and shrubs, wetlands and wildflowers and even large patches of bare dirt that allow prairie dogs \u2014 and other species \u2014 to spot approaching predators.<\/p>\n Bison like to wallow in the dirt exposed by prairie dogs, and graze on the nutritious grass and plants that resprout after a prairie dog pruning. Mountain plovers and thick-billed longspur<\/a>s frequently nest on the grazed surface of prairie dog towns. (Both birds have declined along with prairie dogs; the mountain plover has been proposed for protection under the Endangered Species Act.)<\/p>\n Prairie dog colonies may also provide other species with a home-alarm system. \u201cYou have 1,000 little pairs of eyeballs constantly searching for predators all around you and then vocalizing loudly when they see them,\u201d Boyce said. To test this hypothesis, Boyce\u2019s Ph.D. student Andrew Dreelin attached a taxidermied badger to a remote-controlled car and drove it near long-billed curlew nests in Montana prairie dog colonies. He then measured how nesting curlews responded to the badger with and without a warning from the prairie dogs.<\/p>\n Results are pending, said Dreelin, but he\u2019s certain that \u201cwe\u2019ve only just started to scratch the surface on the multifaceted ways that prairie dogs could shape the lives of birds on the prairie.\u201d<\/p>\n IN EARLY OCTOBER<\/strong>, about 500 miles south of American Prairie, Colten Salyer also donned thick leather gloves to protect himself from an angry mammal\u2019s teeth. Then he opened a cat carrier filled with paper shavings and a member of a species once considered extinct.<\/p>\n The young black-footed ferret inside bared its long white canines. Bred at the National Black-Footed Ferret Conservation Center in northern Colorado<\/a>, she was one of 20 about to be reintroduced to southcentral Wyoming\u2019s Shirley Basin.<\/p>\n The black-footed ferret is North America\u2019s only native ferret and one of only three ferret species in the world. And if there\u2019s one thing black-footed ferrets need, it\u2019s prairie dogs. They eat them almost exclusively, and they use their tunnels to live, hunt and reproduce, slipping in and out of burrows as they move like water across the landscape.<\/p>\n In 1980, black-footed ferrets were declared extinct<\/a>, most likely extinguished by disease, development and endless prairie dog poisoning campaigns. But in 1981, a northern Wyoming ranch dog proudly presented his owners with his most recent treasure: a dead ferret.<\/a> A local taxidermist confirmed that it was, in fact, a black-footed ferret, a member of a tiny remnant population.<\/p>\n The newly discovered ferrets lived in the wild until 1985, when biologists discovered that disease had killed all but 18. At that point, they scooped up the remaining ferrets and took them to captive breeding facilities. Only seven successfully reproduced, but those seven now have more than 11,000 descendants. In 2020, researchers used DNA from a wild-caught ferret with no surviving offspring to produce the first cloned ferret<\/a>. Since then, they have created two more cloned individuals, and this past November, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that one had given birth<\/a> to healthy kits.<\/p>\n Captive-bred ferrets have now been released across the West. But to survive long-term, they need prairie dog colonies. And prairie dogs aren\u2019t popular with their human neighbors.<\/p>\n Because they eat the same grass cows do. And they make holes.<\/p>\n \u201cI was running to rope a yearling once, and I stood up in the saddle and was about to open my hand \u2014 and all of a sudden the horse\u2019s front end disappeared,\u201d said Salyer, a ranch manager in Shirley Basin who volunteered to help with the releases. His horse had sunk a hoof into a prairie dog hole, a misstep that sent Salyer tumbling to the ground.<\/p>\n LEARN MORE<\/p>\n Prepare a slice of your yard for a pollinator garden.<\/p>\n Both Salyer and his horse were fine, and he shrugged after telling the story.But most ranchers have, or have heard, similar stories, many of which end with a valued horse breaking a leg. There\u2019s no way to know how frequently horses injure themselves in burrows, but the stories spread as fast as a prairie fire.<\/p>\n What\u2019s certain is that prairie dogs eat grass. Quite a bit of grass: A single prairie dog can devour up to 2 pounds of green grass and non-woody plants every week, according to Montana State University<\/a>. For ranchers who use that vegetation to feed their cows, prairie dogs look like competition. Researchers, however, say the effects of prairie dogs on livestock forage are mixed<\/a>. Black-tailed prairie dogs\u2019 propensity to clip and mow, for instance, results in plants with higher fat and protein and lower fiber. \u201cAcross years, enhanced forage quality may help to offset reductions in forage quantity for agricultural producers,\u201d a study published in 2019 by Rangeland Ecology and Management<\/em> reported.<\/p>\n This uncertainty has led to some bureaucratic contradictions. The Wyoming Department of Agriculture labels prairie dogs as pest species and offers training in properly using pesticides to kill them; at the same time, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department lists the black-tailed prairie dog<\/a> as a species of greatest conservation need<\/a>.<\/p>\n Until the 1990s, said Randy Matchett, a Fish and Wildlife Service biologist in central Montana, prairie dogs were so despised in places like Phillips County, Montana, that the Bureau of Land Management produced maps of their colonies designed for sport shooters. Attitudes haven\u2019t changed much: In 2020, 27 years after an initial survey of attitudes toward black-tailed prairie dogs and black-footed ferrets in Montana, researchers found that feelings about them had barely budged<\/a>.<\/p>\n Matchett said that when he tells his Montana neighbors that only 2% of prairie dogs remain, a common attitude is: \u201cWhat the hell\u2019s the holdup getting rid of that last 2%?\u201d<\/p>\n Chamois Andersen, a Defenders of Wildlife senior field representative, has spent decades working with landowners in prairie dog-rich places, and she\u2019s persuaded some to allow researchers to survey their land for black-footed ferrets in exchange for funds for noxious weed removal. She speculates that younger generations of ranchers are more open to prairie dog conservation and to partnerships with public agencies and wildlife groups.<\/p>\n Matchett is less optimistic. Even the U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service, which together manage one of the largest black-footed ferret colonies in the world in South Dakota\u2019s Conata Basin, poison some prairie dogs on federal land to prevent the population from moving onto private property.<\/p>\n Not all prairie dogs are equally reviled. White-tailed prairie dogs like those in Shirley Basin live at lower densities and tend to clip plants farther up the stems, making them less obvious to the casual observer. Landowners, as a result, are often more tolerant of them than their black-tailed cousins, said Andrew Gygli, a small-carnivore biologist for Wyoming Game and Fish.<\/p>\n Bob Heward, whose family started ranching in Shirley Basin more than a century ago, understands that a disliked species can also be useful.<\/p>\n He invites recreational shooters to target prairie dogs on his land, but he won\u2019t use poison to kill the rodents because he knows they provide food for other species. Prairie dogs are a \u201cnuisance,\u201d he said, but they\u2019re also as inevitable as the wind: \u201cWe\u2019ve learned to live with them. They\u2019ve been here longer than I have.\u201d<\/p>\n Randy Matchett said that when he tells his Montana neighbors that only 2% of prairie dogs remain, a common attitude is: \u201cWhat the hell\u2019s the holdup getting rid of that last 2%?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n THE MALE SWIFT FOX<\/strong> at the end of the trap line was chunky, at least by swift fox standards: Though he weighed only about 5 pounds, his belly was round beneath his fluffy fur. His black eyes carefully followed Smithsonian researcher Hila Shamon as she loaded him into the backseat of her four-door pickup, covering the trap with a blanket as she prepared to transport him from this ranch north of Laramie, Wyoming, to a new home on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana.<\/p>\n Unlike black-footed ferrets, swift foxes can survive without prairie dogs, but when prairie dogs are scarce they suffer from the loss of food, Shamon said, and are deprived of the shelter they find in prairie dog burrows. So they, too, declined as prairie dogs were exterminated and prairie habitat was converted into cropland. By the early 1900s<\/a>, they had disappeared from Canada, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma.<\/p>\n But swift foxes still live in parts of the West \u2014 and in some places, their populations are being restored. For the last five years, Shamon and her team have trapped swift foxes in Wyoming and Colorado and trucked them to Fort Belknap. This rectangle of grassland, buttes and prairie breaks near the Canadian border is home to the Nakoda (Assiniboine) and A\u2019aninin (Gros Ventre), both Great Plains peoples. Today, it is one of the only places in the world where prairie dogs, swift foxes, black-footed ferrets and bison co-exist.<\/p>\n Montana State Sen. Mike Fox (Gros Ventre), D, who served as Fort Belknap\u2019s director of Fish and Wildlife from 1991 to 2001, oversaw early efforts to restore buffalo, swift foxes and black-footed ferrets to the reservation. The goal was to \u201ccreate a steady, healthy population of native animals that were driven to extinction because of the different uses of the land,\u201d he said. \u201cLike when they started poisoning the prairie dogs off in the \u201930s and \u201940s and wiped out the ferrets that were native here, and the same with the swift fox. We want to make as complete an ecosystem as we can, along with the buffalo.\u201d<\/p>\n The tribes worked with the Fish and Wildlife Service to reintroduce black-footed ferrets, and, with researchers at the Smithsonian, World Wildlife Fund and other organizations, to bring back the swift fox. The collaborators spent two years planning the swift fox capture and translocation, Shamon said, considering factors like habitat quality, community attitudes and the overall risk to a re-established population.<\/p>\n Swift foxes had already been reintroduced in parts of Alberta and Saskatchewan and on the Blackfeet and Fort Peck reservations. The reintroduction at Fort Belknap continued the tribes\u2019 restoration efforts and added a possible point of connectivity for other populations.<\/p>\n Tribal members living on and near the Fort Belknap Reservation have largely supported the reintroduction of native prairie species, especially after prairie dog numbers were diminished by an outbreak of disease in the late \u201990s, Fox said. Now that the population is recovering and has started to clear larger areas of grass, however, some tribal members who raise cattle have begun expressing frustration to the tribal council.<\/p>\n \u201cWildlife and cattle will graze prairie dog colonies because of the new growth coming back throughout the year,\u201d said Fox. \u201cIt makes it look even worse because it\u2019s attractive to wildlife and domestic cattle, and they do their part. When it starts looking like a moonscape is when we get people noticing the most.\u201d<\/p>\n He tells people that the little grass-eating rodents are necessary, and notes that the \u201cmoonscapes\u201d aren\u2019t as widespread as they may seem. But like non-Native ranchers across the West, some tribal members equate abundant prairie dogs with fewer cows. Fox doesn\u2019t believe the council will allow widespread prairie dog poisoning on tribal lands \u2014 especially since the reservation now hosts black-footed ferrets \u2014 but he does worry that opposition could intensify.<\/p>\n Bronc Speak Thunder (Assiniboine), director of the Fort Belknap Buffalo Program, has also heard people complain about prairie dogs, though he added that \u201cpeople complain about a lot of stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n The tribes aren\u2019t actively restoring prairie dogs, he said; they\u2019re simply refraining from poisoning and shooting them. He sees that prairie dogs benefit tribal land by creating more habitat for ground-nesting birds and serving as food for swift foxes, coyotes, hawks and eagles. They also encourage the growth of nutritious grass for bison. \u201cLike life, it\u2019s a big circle, and that\u2019s where it fits,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re part of the ecosystem that exists, and if you take something out, it throws everything off.\u201d<\/p>\n WHEN I MET<\/strong> Randy Matchett, the Fish and Wildlife Service biologist, he sported a cowboy hat and graying horseshoe mustache and carried a handful of Smurf-blue flea-control pellets, each slightly smaller than a marble. The pellets, which Matchett produced in his workshop at the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge headquarters in Lewistown, Montana, are his latest attempt to protect prairie dogs from a fatal disease.<\/p>\n The pellets contain Fipronil, an insecticide used in treatments likeFrontline to keep fleas and ticks away from household pets, and are flavored with peanut butter and molasses to increase their chances of ending up in prairie dog bellies. Matchett dyes them blue because research shows prairie dogs are attracted to the color, and because the dye stains their feces, making it easy to estimate how many animals have consumed the pellets. Once ingested, Matchett hopes, his \u201cFipBits\u201d will kill the fleas that land on and bite prairie dogs, including the fleas carrying the bacteria that causes plague.<\/p>\n Yes, that plague. The bacte-ria Yersinia pestis <\/em>causes bubonic plague, which became known as the Black Death after it killed at least 25 million Europeans during the 14th century.<\/p>\n In 1900, the disease arrived in North America via San Francisco, carried by rats stowed away on ships. During the following decades, the development of antibiotics controlled the disease in humans, but plague continued to spread among rodent species, affecting black-footed ferrets, rabbits and squirrels. First detected in prairie dogs in 1936, it devastated populations already hit hard by the conversion of the prairie to agriculture<\/a> \u2014 and it remains a major threat to prairie dogs.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce colonies have plague, they can disappear in two weeks,\u201d said Shamon. \u201cThere will be thousands of acres chirping with thousands or tens of thousands of animals and in two weeks, you will go map it, and they\u2019re gone.\u201d<\/p>\n A plague vaccine does exist, and is used to protect highly endangered species like black-footed ferrets. But it\u2019s simply not possible to jab every prairie dog in the West. Matchett, who as a Fish and Wildlife biologist is responsible for conserving endangered species, got involved in plague prevention in the early 1990s, initially dusting prairie dog colonies for fleas. In 2013, he began testing oral vaccines in Montana colonies, working in parallel with researchers in seven other states. The first-generation vaccines were red, peanut-butter flavored cubes with a biomarker that tinted prairie dog whiskers pink. Matchett and his colleagues in Colorado also developed vaccine pellets that they mass-produced using a Lithuanian carp bait-making machine. Matchett helped craft a pellet shooter that could be bolted to the front of a four-wheeler.<\/p>\n Prairie dogs are \u201cpart of the ecosystem that exists, and if you take something out, it throws everything off.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n With the new vaccines primed to launch, Matchett felt hopeful. The World Wildlife Fund, which helped fund some of the work, felt hopeful, too. But in 2018, after years of trials with thousands of prairie dogs, he and other researchers concluded that even when a colony was given oral vaccinations, the number of prairie dogs that survived a plague outbreak was too small to support a black-footed ferret population.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n So Matchett pivoted. If he couldn\u2019t inoculate prairie dogs against plague, maybe he could kill the fleas that carried the bacteria. What if he could persuade prairie dogs to eat Fipronil?<\/p>\n He made a new set of pellets with the same bait machine, this time using his wife\u2019s grandmother\u2019s Kitchen-Aid mixer to blend various types of flour, vital wheat gluten, peanut butter, molasses and other food-grade ingredients with a soup\u00e7on of flea killer. Early results have been promising: While adult fleas aren\u2019t affected until they bite a prairie dog that\u2019s ingested a pellet, not every flea needs to be killed; studies have shown that in general, fleas don\u2019t trigger plague outbreaks until they reach a critical mass. And flea larvae appear to die when they crawl into or consume treated prairie dog poop, suggesting that the pellets could tamp down flea reproduction as well as kill the adult insects.<\/p>\n FipBits aren\u2019t the only way to reduce the toll plague takes on prairie dogs, but Matchett believes they\u2019re the most likely to work. In his office, perched on stacks of files, are the remnants of another of his many assaults on the problem: dozens of vials of alcohol, each containing bits of prairie dog ears. In 2007 and 2008, Matchett and his colleagues collected the snippets from prairie dogs that had survived plague outbreaks, hoping genetic analysis would explain their fortitude. The material has yet to be analyzed owing to a \u201ccombination of lack of funding, interest, time and capability,\u201d Matchett said, but he hopes new funding will allow him and his collaborators to return to the project.<\/p>\n Despite the setbacks, Matchett believes researchers can find a way to control plague in prairie dogs. Human intolerance, as he sees it, is a more stubborn problem. Places like Fort Belknap and the Conata Basin of South Dakota \u2014 where prairie dogs are, at least for now, allowed to flourish \u2014 remain few and far between.<\/p>\n DRIVE SOUTH<\/strong> from Fort Belknap down Highway 191, head east on a straight gravel road, and you\u2019ll find one more place where prairie dogs are left in peace.<\/p>\n American Prairie began in 2001 as an effort to protect and restore Montana\u2019s grasslands. The nonprofit now manages more than 527,000 acres of private land and federal and state leases<\/a>. Its ultimate goal is to connect 3.2 million acres of prairie, providing habitat for an array of species from bison to mountain plovers to black-footed ferrets. To the casual observer, American Prairie\u2019s lands may already look like intact prairie, though ecologists like Daniel Kinka can\u2019t help noticing the nonnative crested wheatgrass and the hundreds of miles of fencing.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is kind of like the Field of Dreams<\/em> model: If you build it, they will come,\u201d said Kinka, American Prairie\u2019s director of rewilding. \u201cA better habitat houses more wildlife, and the wildlife that are here are perfectly capable of restoring themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n American Prairie prohibits the poisoning and shooting of prairie dogs on its land, and it regularly hosts research projects such as the Smithsonian\u2019s burrow mapping \u2014 which may help explain how plague spreads within colonies \u2014 and Matchett\u2019s tests of plague-mitigation tools. Prairie dogs, said Kinka, are the \u201cunsung heroes of a prairie ecosystem,\u201d important to all the other species American Prairie is trying to foster. And as researchers have found<\/a>, the woody plants that prairie dogs chew down to clear their line of sight tend to be replaced by nutritious grasses and wildflowers, suggesting that even cattle may benefit from their presence.<\/p>\n The possibility that prairie dogs could be good for cattle, or at least not as bad as generally believed, is met with skepticism by American Prairie\u2019s neighbors, many of whom see the nonprofit as a threat to ranching. Signs posted along highways in Phillips County, Montana, read \u201cSave the American Cowboy. Stop American Prairie Reserve.\u201d For now, Kinka isn\u2019t trying to convince anyone to like or even appreciate prairie dogs, aiming instead for tolerance.<\/p>\n READ MORE<\/p>\n How farmers in Canada’s north are trying to grow local food production by tweaking some prairie staples.<\/p>\n The black-tailed prairie dog complex studied by the Smithsonian team at American Prairie is a noisy place, filled with the barks and trills of hundreds of creatures. As I stood beside researcher Jesse Boulerice, listening, it was easy to imagine that the rodents were doing just fine. But they\u2019re not. Will they ever be allowed to exist in numbers like this throughout their historic range?<\/p>\n Boulerice surveyed the surface of the colony, which was covered with dried plant nubs and bare mounds of dirt, and said he wasn\u2019t sure.<\/p>\n Then he released a collared prairie dog who wagged her chubby butt in the air as she scurried into a nearby hole. She promptly popped back up, chirping out a message we\u2019ll never understand. Perhaps she was warning her colony-mates to watch out for those marshmallows and carrots; they hide a nasty trap.<\/p>\n Or maybe she was scolding us \u2014 telling us exactly what she thought of our species before she disappeared into her burrow, leaving us to decide the future of hers.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This story is part of High Country News\u2019 Conservation Beyond Boundaries project<\/a>, which is supported by the BAND Foundation.<\/em><\/p>\n This article<\/a> first appeared on High Country News<\/a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license. We welcome reader letters.\u00a0Email\u00a0High Country News\u00a0at\u00a0editor@hcn.org<\/a>\u00a0or submit a\u00a0letter to the editor<\/a>. See our\u00a0letters to the editor policy<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The prairie dog caught in Trap 69 was angry. And who could blame her? After waking up in her burrow on a mid-September morning, she\u2019d waddled innocently outside for a breakfast of mini marshmallows and carrots, only to find herself stuck in a wire cage and carried across the prairie. Then a pair of human […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2063,"featured_media":166820,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":[33284],"meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33067],"tags":[33071,33273,33251],"article-theme":[33317],"class_list":["post-166819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-farm","tag-animals","tag-biodiversity","tag-sustainability","format-republication","article-theme-general"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"Jesse](\"https:\/\/www.hcn.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/prairie-dog-57-01_7.jpg\")
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