By dawn on an August morning, the landscaping crew on the Marathon Grasslands Protect in Brewster County is difficult at work. Plump, sandy brown our bodies scamper throughout the gently sloping floor at this 2,700-acre protect about ten miles northeast of Marathon, pausing the place a bit of too-tall grass must be chewed down. Grime flies as a digger cleans out a burrow, her black-tipped tail bouncing as she works. It’s a social bunch that contact noses as they cross each other and sustain a gradual chatter of birdlike chirps. In the meantime, a sentry retains look ahead to predators from her perch on prime of a mound. She stands alert, her stumpy little T. Rex arms resting on her white stomach, and scans the panorama.
This industrious bunch is a part of the biggest black-tailed prairie canine city within the Trans-Pecos, the desert area that stretches from the Pecos River west to El Paso and encompasses the Large Bend space. The city covers greater than 1 / 4 of the Marathon Grasslands Protect, owned and managed by the Nature Conservancy, and extends into neighboring properties. But regardless of this colony’s spectacular measurement, the black-tailed prairie canine—the commonest of the 5 species of prairie canine in North America—as we speak inhabits solely 2 p.c of its native vary. That territory as soon as coated 100 million acres of the Nice Plains, stretching from southern Canada into Mexico. People have paved and plowed a lot of that land and eradicated the rodents alongside the best way. However latest analysis has proven that prairie canine are useful to grasslands—and even perhaps to grazing cattle.
“The public perception about prairie dogs, and especially with the ranching community, has changed drastically over the last seventy years or so,” says Kaylee French, the Nature Conservancy’s West Texas schooling and outreach supervisor. The conservancy and close by landowners now usually share a constructive view of prairie canine, she says. “They’ve seen that prairie dogs provide value on the landscape and can coexist harmoniously with cattle.”
On this summer season morning, we’re bumping alongside an previous ranch highway in French’s truck, hoping to see a few of the critters up shut. Dragonflies hover within the air, and crickets creak within the golden grass. Scaled quail, their fish-shiny breasts rippling with gentle, scurry into the comb. As we cross into one other pasture, the tall grass is changed by a brief inexperienced carpet pockmarked with prairie canine holes. French factors out the doorway burrows, every surrounded by a mound of dust that offers sentries a vantage level and retains rain from flooding the tunnels. The mounds stretch a number of ft throughout—the city is definitely seen on Google satellite tv for pc view, with every burrow showing as a darkish dot ringed by a white circle. Tunnels prolong six to fifteen ft under floor, with a number of “rooms” for nesting or listening to what’s taking place on the floor. A half dozen prairie canine dart out and in of holes, yipping to alert each other of our presence.
A black-tailed prairie canine and a burrowing owl.Getty
As we cease to look at, two burrowing owls sweep low throughout the bottom and land on an entrance mound. The owls are small, about ten inches tall, and stand on spindly legs harking back to an old style clothespin. A few prairie canine emerge from the opening and stand subsequent to the owls. Everybody stares at us.
Burrowing owls are odd birds. Not like most owls, they hunt throughout the day and, as an alternative of residing in timber, nest underground—ideally in a gap another person has already dug. They search out lively prairie canine burrows, having fun with a lock-and-leave way of life as a result of their hosts do all of the yard work. Luckily, the owls have the decency to not eat their hosts; their typical eating regimen consists of bugs, lizards, and smaller rodents, reminiscent of voles and kangaroo rats.
The owls aren’t the one squatters right here. Barking frogs and prairie rattlesnakes additionally take shelter within the burrows. That is a part of what makes prairie canine a “keystone species” for the grasslands, French explains. “If you took them out of the ecosystem, it would affect many different plant species and many different animal species in the area. They’re kind of the glue that holds the ecosystem together.” After all, eradicating anybody animal from a area could have deleterious results on the entire system, French says. However the impact is extra pronounced with prairie canine as a result of they’re so helpful to different wildlife. Different animals use prairie canine holes, and different animals— coyotes, bobcats, badgers, ferruginous hawks, golden eagles—eat prairie canine for dinner.
Prairie canine even have a big position in sustaining native grasslands, a whopping 62 p.c of which have been misplaced since European settlement to agriculture and growth or to woody shrub encroachment. Within the absence of wildfire, shrubs and bushes are inclined to take over prairie landscapes, utilizing vitamins that grasses want and altering the hydrology of the soil. Because the open prairie disappears, so do its birds and animals, reminiscent of pronghorn, which want ample open area to evade predators.
Fortunately for these fauna, prairie canine are “grassland engineers” who stop the bigger vegetation from encroaching, French says. They nibble down woody shrubs reminiscent of tarbush, mesquite, and allthorn, partly to put on down their constantly rising prime incisors, and partly to maintain predators from having a spot to cover. Plus, their fixed digging aerates the soil, and their scat returns vitamins to the panorama.
As extra ranchers have realized about these advantages, some have come to embrace the long-maligned prairie canine. For years, the prevailing knowledge amongst ranchers held that prairie canine have been a risk to cattle, partly as a result of they dug holes that cows might by accident step into, breaking a leg. It’s a reputable concern, however a manageable one, says Bonnie Warnock, a professor and soil scientist on the Borderlands Analysis Institute at Sul Ross State College in Alpine. Warnock grew up on a ranch close to Marathon and was conscious that not each landowner shared her father’s tolerance of prairie canine. Her father was cautious to maintain the rodents out of pens the place livestock have been crowded right into a confined area and couldn’t see the place they have been stepping. However in open pastures, the place cattle might simply see and keep away from the holes, he left the prairie canine alone, conscious that they’d a useful impact on the panorama.
Many ranchers additionally perceived that prairie canine competed with cattle for grass. However a latest yearlong research by the BRI discovered that prairie canine didn’t lower the general amount of grass on the panorama—and that cattle could want grazing on prairie canine cities. The analysis group, which included Warnock, positioned GPS collar-wearing cattle on three completely different sections of the Marathon Grasslands Protect, every containing a special share of prairie canine city. By monitoring the GPS knowledge, the researchers might inform the place the cattle spent probably the most time grazing; in the meantime, the group collected vegetation at common intervals and measured its quantity and nutrient content material. Because it seems, the areas with prairie canine produced simply as a lot grass, though it was spaced out in another way. In heat seasons, the cattle spent extra time grazing on the prairie canine colonies than on areas with out prairie canine.
“Our finding was that it’s not detrimental to have prairie dogs on your ranch,” Warnock says. “You can actually look at them as being positive for your cattle grazing.” The BRI has shared its findings with Trans-Pecos land managers, most of whom she describes as very receptive to the knowledge. She stated a number of famous they’d already noticed an identical phenomenon to what BRI documented in its research.
That response is a component of a bigger shift in perceptions of the animals, French says. “More recently, people love the prairie dogs . . . They see them as an integrated part of the ecosystem.”
Marathon Grasslands PreserveCourtesy of Jerod Foster/The Nature Conservancy in TexasWhere to See Prairie Canines in Texas
The Marathon Grasslands Protect is often closed to the general public however gives periodic free excursions. Verify the Nature Conservancy web site for updates.
A number of roadside pullouts on the west facet of U.S. 385, 5 to 10 miles north of Marathon, provide good prairie canine viewing (carry binoculars).
Lubbock, Abilene, and Fort Price have prairie canine cities accessible to the general public.
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