Great Plains Restoration Council “Serving our Youth, Protecting our Prairie Earth.”
Great Plains Restoration Council “Serving our Youth, Protecting our Prairie Earth.”
State agrees to scrutinize prairie dog 'target practice'
Activists ask to put end to glorified rodent kills - By Todd Hartman, Rocky Mountain News. Click here to read the article
Buffalo and Prairie Dogs are the bookends of the prairie, due to their ecosystem creating habits. They are both, along with fire, the reason why the Great Plains was once so abundant with life. Prairie dogs are keystone species. Over 160 native birds and animals depend for food and shelter upon the rich ecosystem prairie dogs create, like ocean fish depend on coral reefs. Prairie dog colonies are the coral reefs of the sea of grass.
Photograph by GPRC Board Member, Dan Licht
On the Plains, as elsewhere around the world, the coral reefs are dying.
99% of all black-tailed prairie dogs have been poisoned, gassed or shot.
Extinction now threatens a multitude of Plains wildlife, including the prairie dogs themselves.
GPRC Reference Section on Black-Tailed Prairie Dogs
For more information on Prairie Dogs and their plight, please visit the links below.
Prairie Dogs.org
Prairie Dog Coalition
Prairie Dogs at Home - National Geographic
Learning to Live with Prairie Dogs
Dr. C. N. Slobodchikoff recent paper with the referential communication of black-tailed prairie dogs, which shows that black-tails have the same kind of sophistication in their alarm calls that we have been documenting with Gunnison's pdogs, including a different call for a man with a gun.
Download Paper [PDF]
Dr. C. N. Slobodchikoff
Professor of Biology
Northern Arizona University
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~cns3
Study shows health of survivors in shot-at prairie dog colonies overwhelmed by stress Summary: Surviving prairie dogs spend more time underground, lose weight, reproduce less, don’t eat as much, and remaining colony generally declines in health
Prairie Dog Articles:
Augustine
Mellado
Gallie
Magle
Snall
Quinn
Written by:
Ana Davidson, Ph.D.
Instituto de Ecología
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Apdo Postal 70-275
México D.F. 04510
México
Tel y fax (52) 55-56229004
http://www.unm.edu/~davidson/home.htm
GPRC staff biologist Ana Davidson holding her adopted son Malya, who was blinded in a poison gas attack. © J. Manos 
