Prairie dog: pet or pest?

If you take a ride with almost any rancher in Western Nebraska you will learn a fair share of knowledge. They will tell you about that drought from a few years back. They might discuss how long the land has been in the family. They will definitely tell you how many head of cattle they own. Finally, they will reference to those nuisance prairie dogs that are “taking over their pasture.” When that happens, I tend to just sneak a grin out the corner of my mouth and proceed to the next topic.

You might ask why I find this so humorous. It humors me because of the ignorance people have for this species. Any person that knows about rangelands will tell you that the prairie dog, more specifically the black-tailed prairie dog, is a keystone species. Simply defined by any source engine, a keystone species is a species on which other species in an ecosystem largely depend, such that if it were removed the ecosystem would change drastically.

Believe it or not, prairie dogs are the mold that have the ability to keep a landscape together. First, they serve as a food source for many animals. This includes foxes, coyotes, badgers, ferrets, owls, eagles, snakes, and many more species. They reproduce quickly, which provides a great predator-prey relationship. Their colonies provide habitat for many species which includes the black-footed ferret. (The black-footed ferret has become nearly extinct due to the reduction in prairie dogs.) Their colonies also provide habitat for the burrowing owl, an interesting species that actually nests in their burrows.

Of course there is that debate on the effects that they have grazing animals. Ranchers hate the species because they take over their pastures and can cause cattle to break their legs when the cattle step in the burrows. However, we have to look at the positives for cattle and other rangeland species. A book called “Prairie Dog Empire” outlines the benefits this species offers. For example, positive plant diversity actually increases in the presence of prairie dogs. Better yet, the quality of plants is much higher due to an increase in nitrogen. Therefore, animals have to eat much less to get a quality meal.

In conclusion, “Prairie Dog Empire” offers some jaw-dropping statistics on historical distribution of black-tailed prairie dogs. The book uses an example from a biologist working for the U.S. Biological Survey in 1905.

The book states, “A prairie dog colony north of San Angelo, Texas, some 100 miles wide and about 250 miles long. He thought there might be 400 million animals on this single area of about 16 million acres.”