Conservation of the Black-Tailed Prairie Dog: Saving North America's Western Grasslands

The prairie dog is a colonial, keystone species of the grassland ecosystem of western North America. Myriad animals regularly visit colony-sites to feed on the grass there, to use the burrows for shelter or nesting, or to prey on the prairie dogs. Unfortunately, prairie dogs are disappearing, and the current number is only about 2% of the number encountered by Lewis and Clark in the early 1800s.

Part I of Conservation of the Black-Tailed Prairie Dog summarizes ecology and social behavior f...