Prairie dogs moved to safer ground at Thunder Basin

Collaborative relocation project bodes well for recovery of prairie species

From the outside, it looked like a simple matter of moving animals from one place to another. But for our Rocky Mountain Representative Jonathan Proctor, it was a precedent-setting triumph for wildlife conservation on America's National Grasslands.

Proctor worked 16-hour shifts for seven straight days this July, helping trap 120 prairie dogs and relocating them to a protected area within Thunder Basin National Grassland in eastern Wyoming. Thus began a unique collaborative partnership with the U.S. Forest Service, Wyoming Game and Fish, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and fellow prairie dog experts from the Humane Society of the United States, World Wildlife Fund and Biodiversity Conservation Alliance to relocate hundreds of prairie dogs from the periphery of this protected area to their new home at its center.

Prairie dogs are a "keystone" species of the Great Plains. They once numbered in the millions, or even billions, and provided abundant food and shelter for numerous other species of wildlife. But by the early 1900s, less than five percent remained as a result of plowing, poisoning, exotic disease and shooting. Prairie dogs live in colonies that once covered 10 to 20 percent of the Great Plains, but today these colonies cover less than one percent.

Read more here
http://www.defenders.org/about_us/success_stories/prairie_dogs_moved_to_safer_ground_at_thunder_basin.php