We drove down hiway 44 through the prairie dog devestation last Thursday. While I was so tired I had difficulty staying awake, I could see the absolutely barren ground, drifts of dirt that had blown, and lots of prairie dogs. They really should have been named properly: Prairie Rats, as they ARE rodents, aren't they? I believe we were not even in the worst of it. Also believe cattle have not been allowed in some of the area for many years, even predating the drought. Tall grass sure doesn't deter them from moving into an area, in our experience.

That clearly is a problem made worse by enviroextremists who inflated the numbers "originally" existing to promote larger areas of land they could control to grow the numbers, IMO, and supported by research.

I think prairie dogs should be CONSIDERED for protection sometime AFTER the common household rat is protected and homeowners in the cities are forced to provide food and housing for them in their own homes!

BTW, we don't eliminate coyotes (nor do we have much problem with them), we have lots of hawks, and we still have prairie dogs trying to move onto our land, which generally has at least half the cover left on it. Maybe less during severe drought.

MRJ