Claymore said the plague hasn’t hit there yet, but the tribal program can’t afford the dusting effort now in progress near Wall.

“With the poverty level here, we really couldn’t justify spending resources on killing fleas to protect prairie dogs for ferrets,” he said. “As a contingency against plague, we’ve chosen to have several ferret sites miles apart. Right now we’ve still got ferrets and prairie dog numbers. Hopefully the ferrets can hold their own for a while.”

That is what Griebel is hoping for as he oversees the dusting programs that fight the plague in key ferret-recovery areas near and in the Badlands. It is an annual expense and chore that will be necessary until the plague loses its grip on the Conata Basin and grasslands nearby, Griebel said.

The program he manages out of the Wall office will dust 11,000 acres to 12,000 acres this year on the national grasslands allotments. Another 2,000 acres or so will be dusted in Badlands National Park.

Griebel is there regularly to oversee the work, which includes following Kelly and his crew through flagged-off treatment lanes to make sure they get almost every burrow.