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.
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.