Once upon a time...

...around B.C. (before conservation), I was pretty ignorant of the fact or facts or the factoids surrounding anything related to urban development. I said to myself, "Self?  Radiating urban development regardless of land we're encroaching is the price we pay for progress!" I thought I was sensitive enough, I was a vegetarian and I didn't buy most consumer goods with leather.

I can ride a bike y'all!

As a competitive cyclist living in Denver-a city with a fairly glorious bike path system thingy-I would ride through bike trails that encroached upon and bisected prairie dog colonies. I seemed to be playing a very human game of Frogger. Avoiding the scurrying, quasi-cute little rodents, but, noticing what kind of havoc they wreaked as I passed through this area.  I noticed the mounds, the burrows, the communication, the exposure of soil then I remembered someone telling me that they can pass the plague (well technically not the p. dog but the fleas that infest them). Not  the most auspicious start in my book for these critters for my inaugural visit to prairie dog town. In fact, ranchers poison these guys because they compete with their cattle for grazing (grass).  I figured, poor little rodentia misunderstood dudes.  Well actually, it was me who misunderstood them and what turned it around was education.
Fast forward a decade or so, and you'll find yours truly attempting to get a Masters degree in Conservation Biology and becoming enlightened in the way of the prairie dog and their contributions. Let me rewind a couple hundred years when Denver and most of the United States really were surrounded by prairie grasslands.  The same grasslands that provide us food, oxygen, ground water, arable soil, carbon sinks, and grazable material (if you don't believe me, click on this link).

That's right! It's a large ecosystem!

So you're probably saying who cares about these prairie dogs. Well Madams and Sirs, this ecosystem is dependent on the aforementioned prairie dogs to keep the ecosystem services robust and mutually beneficial. When uneducated managers make bike paths on prairie dog colonies, habitats get fragmented, and prairie dog populations get too large for the ecosystem's good.  It's like the Goldie Locks effect, not too much, not too little, but just right.
Like our government running on a system of checks and balances, these cute, plague carrying rodents also need a system of checks and balances. Where their habitat is fragmented, we need to relocate them to an appropriate parcel of land away from ranches or busy roads. Next, to spend minimum time maintaining their habitat so that it becomes self-sustaining, we need a prairie dog's natural predator to do that for us.  That role would be provided for us by reintroducing the black footed ferret into prairie dog colonies.

Get 'em my BFF!

These weasels (literally) are the yin to the prairie dogs yang. They provide the prairie dog population a natural dynamic system of checks and balances therefore keeping this ecosystem healthy AND if managed properly, surrounding communities can reap the therapeutic value of being surrounded by nature via a healthy ecosystem.
So now, when I see prairie dogs, i say, "Self! More power to the prairie dogs because not only are they a keystone species to keep the prairie grasslands healthy but they are the snickers of the grasslands to my new BFF the black-footed ferret."

So educated blog reader, have you changed your mind about prairie dogs yet?  Want to support the black-footed ferret reintroduction?  Yeah, I thought so.

You can support this, check out my links on my blog page.