DENVER, Colorado (dpa) – The huge, freely-roaming herds of buffalo have long vanished from the grass prairielands of North America.
But now in the new millenium things are getting tough for another, smaller represtantive of the “Wild West”: the prairie dog.Up till 1900, according to the naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton (1860-1946), at least five billion of these roughly 30-centimetre long, 1.3 kilogram rodents inhabited the North American prairie.Their misleading name – actually they are related to the squirrel – came from the first European immigrants because of the barking signals of warning they would give out.According to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, at the turn of the last century the prairie dogs’ natural habitat stretched over an area of more than 400,000 square kilometres – a region which today comprises 11 U.S. states as well as parts of Mexico and Canada.Today, at most one per cent of this original area is still inhabited by the prairie dog, according to the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center in Jamestown, North Dakota.As people moved in to create grazing lands for cattle and space to build towns, the furry animals, which by day eat grass and insects and at night burrow as deep as three metres below ground, have been systematically driven out or even poisoned.Other colonies of the animals fell victim to a rodent virus brought in to North America. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that up to 98 per cent of the overall prairie dog population was decimated.Of the five various species, the black-tailed prairie dog is still the most widespread one. But animal preservationists are now concerned that it is also soon threatened by extinction, if in some states the prairie dog is is officially declared to be a “pest” or is opened up to small-game hunters not requiring a permit.Two years ago, the National Wildlife Federation presented a petition which the Fish & Wildlife Service recently approved. It judged that the prairie dog is fundamentally a threatened animal which should be protected.But the acceptance of the animal in the list of threatened species can take place in two years at the earliest, cautions Jill Parker of the wildlife service office in Denver.Unfortunately, the financial means are limited and the protective measures are more urgently needed for other animals. But one ray of hope for the prairie dog is that nine states have voluntarily pledged to protect the existing population for the transition period.“It’s a clear victory for us,” said a jubilant Catherine Johnson, speaking for the National Wildlife Federation branch in Boulder, Colorado.But she said it was disappointing that along with North Dakota, her own home state had not signed the agreement to protect the prairie dog. In Colorado, where ambitiously expanding suburbs are to be made into high-tech bastions, the prairie dogs’ sand hills often border with the new construction areas.Now the “Rocky Mountain Animal Defense” group, hoping to prevent thousands of the animals’ lives being lost in the collision between the Wild West and the world of business, has filed a suit.At the district court in Boulder the group wants to stop the use of poison in order to guarantee the survival of the tiny representatives of the Wild West.
