Posted on 04/21/2017 1:35:51 PM PDT by mdittmar
Montana media outlets have reported that Greg Gianforte announced he would take Donald Trump Jr. on a hunting excursion to shoot Black-tailed prairie dogs in Montana. For prairie dogs, March through June is peak breeding season, which means pregnant, adult females will also be at risk. This is especially disconcerting because Black-tailed prairie dogs have an average of fewer than three pups per year.
“Prairie dogs are an important keystone species with myriad other species dependent on their survival, including the burrowing owl, black-footed ferret and nesting birds. People do not hunt these animals for food or any legitimate wildlife management purposes,” said Lindsey Sterling Krank, director for the Prairie Dog Coalition of The Humane Society of the United States. “We have a duty to protect them to ensure that every species within the ecosystem continues to thrive.”
The Prairie Dog Coalition of The HSUS has long opposed contest shoots and other shooting killing escapades where these creatures are shot for nothing more than target practice. In using high-powered weapons to kill prairie dogs, the animals can seem to explode or have body parts severed and sent flying.
Additional Background:
LOL! I gotta remember that one!
Really ? Besides improving soil and plant quality, prairie dogs control woody plants, like mesquite, into grasslands. Too bad for the cattle that graze preferentially along prairie dog colony edges and use the colony centers for resting.
“How would someone know a critter is pregnant? Have her pee on a stick and then wait to see the results?”
Lay out pickles and ice cream bait...
Your comment that Ranchers are ignorant was totally off base.
I work with a wildlife biologist in my dept who has focused much of his career on the dynamics of prairie dog town growth and decline.
They are destructive because they are prolific. Many kits born per littler with multiple litters per season equates to over population and the ensuing expansion of the prairie dog town. The only thing that effectively keeps a town in check is the occassional bloom of plague. Sure, poison helps but it may be counter productive to efforts to cultivate Ferret numbers.
Prairie dog towns are associated with abused, overgrazed lands. When you neighbor somebody who doesn’t give a flip for control, the results are the dogs will move to an adjoining property.
Prairie dog towns consist predominately of bare ground with some patches of grass that haven’t been consumed yet. It has to be that way or else the predators would have an advantage.
They are MAD! They can’t even see the hypocrisy.
But how many of those pups survive six months or a year?
Prairie dogs and cattle can have a mutualistic relationship but I do agree both they and ferrets first both need to be inoculated against the plague.
When you hit them with a solid body shot from a .220 Swift, they pretty much are unzipped. Then you can tell.
I was not insinuating that either the dogs or Ferrets need inoculation. I assumed that you would realize that a poisoned dog colony would not only reduce food supplies (the Prairie Dogs) but also provide secondary poison risks to all predators that consume the poisoned carcasses.
There is nothing “mutualistic” to dogs and cattle other than the fact that they provide an alternative food source to coyotes and other predators and provide a relief to predation upon baby calves.
I can assure you that most, if not all sane cattle producers don’t want prairie dogs on their places.
I don’t know what science you are relying on but from the research I have read prairie dogs are beneficial to grazers in some situations, and that both cattle and bison often prefer the vegetation on prairie dog colonies, as it is more nutrient-rich. In another study, cattle grazing alongside prairie dogs gained the same amount of weight as cattle in pastures with no prairie dogs. It may not be as symbiotic as bison and dogs but to say there is nothing there just means there are benefits that are mostly unappreciated or as yet to be uncovered.
http://wyomingpublicmedia.org/post/research-finds-prairie-dogs-and-cattle-not-always-odds
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25760377
Black-tailed prairie dogs, cattle, and the conservation of North America’s arid grasslands.
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