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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A prairie dog sentry alerts its family and its burrow mates of danger.

A communicator with a varied vocabulary, the sentry can let its mates know whether they have faced the danger before, whether it’s a bird, a coyote, human or something else and whether it’s time to run for cover or just be careful, according to experts.

Chances are if you’ve driven or walked in the Albuquerque Foothills, you may have seen these socially evolved rodents, in their prairie dog towns and villages.

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To some ranchers, farmers and homeowners, prairie dogs are pests, but to other biologists, rangers and advocates, prairie dogs are ecological engineers, a keystone species that keeps the mesas from turning into deserts and provide food, home or shelter to about 200 other species. For some animals like the burrowing owl, the endangered black-footed ferret, ferruginous hawk and golden eagle, prairie dogs are food that sustains them.

There are a fewer prairie dogs this week around Chelwood Elementary School, where they had moved into a playing field, but were relocated to Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, near Socorro.

Refuge manager Kathy Granillo says volunteers are eagerly watching the new families to see if they can re-establish themselves in the short grass prairies there.

“This provides a win-win resolution to the problem of prairie dogs on school grounds. The school children at Chelwood now have a safer play area and the refuge moves a few steps forward toward restoring the grassland ecosystem,” Granillo says.

Of the 300 released, about 75 were from Chelwood Elementary. “We’re trying to see if more of them can survive.”

‘Little civil engineers’

Prairie Dog Pals, a nonprofit organization in Albuquerque that supports, rescues and relocates prairie dogs, helped with the roundup.

“We’re so grateful we have a place to take them,” says Yvonne Boudreaux, president of the organization. “Sevilleta is so large there is no conflict with neighbors.”

Boudreaux says dedicated volunteers trap the prairie dogs intact with their families, because they don’t survive well, if at all, without their social network. “They have each other’s backs. They care and are concerned about each other.”

She explains that prairie dogs have an interdependent system, with most members assigned a role than can change. Some are watchdogs or sentries, while others mind the nurseries or hunt and gather food. Their burrows have hardened walls like stucco, from their constant vigilance. Their living quarters contain chambers for sleeping, eating, storage, a nursery for babies and waste disposal.

“Biologists tell us that the orientation of the burrow keeps the chambers at a constant 55 degrees,” Boudreaux says. “They are our favorite little civil engineers. They are constantly amending and shoring up their living quarters.”

Adult Gunnison prairie dogs, the species most common in New Mexico, are about a foot high and weigh about two pounds, she says. Male dogs are generally larger than females. They are related to ground squirrels.

The volunteers at Prairie Dog Pals check to make sure the dogs are healthy, microchip them and observe them in a staging area before they relocate them, Boudreaux says.

She says the group will come and get prairie dogs when anyone calls them if they’ve turned up in their field or backyard.

Declining populations

Each year since 2010, the refuge has been a new home to 600 Gunnison prairie dogs, Granillo says. But it’s hard for prairie dogs to move. She says about 27 percent of those relocated will be alive the next year. It takes a while for those sentry dogs to figure out who’s a friend and who’s a foe: “They are naive about the area.”

The refuge has dedicated about 80 acres for prairie dogs, an area historically home to them.

Granillo says college interns are watching the prairie dogs, their fur dyed with henna numbers for easy identification, in several treated areas to see which suits them best.

As the grasslands became ranches and farms, prairie dogs were exterminated, Granillo says. She says prairie dog populations across North America have declined by more than 90 percent as a result of habitat loss, extermination and disease.

Through a federal hearing process, prairie dogs were proposed to be an endangered species, but the determination was that while the data show they may be endangered, the federal government didn’t have enough resources to manage them as an endangered species, Granillo explains.

Prairie dogs’ interconnecting system of burrows aerate the soil and help it hold water. This and other prairie dog activity help re-establish native grasses and flowers, she says.

Granillo acknowledges that not everyone agrees on the prairie dog’s place in the ecosystem.

However, continuing research in the Janos Biosphere Reserve in northern Chihuahua, Mexico, show that prairie dogs serve to keep the semi-arid grasslands intact, she says, benefitting livestock.

Boudreaux says Navajos and other Native Americans have been warning ranchers and farmers to pay attention to prairie dogs as if they were sentries for the entire region.

Environmentalist Bill Mollison writes that in Arizona in the 1950s, Navajos warned of danger, when agricultural scientists recommended eradication of burrowing animals to protect the sparse desert grasses. The elders said, “if you kill the prairie dogs who will cry for rain?”

Mollison says the area has become a virtual wasteland with eroding runoff and soil compaction, killing the grasses.

“It’s all about balance,” Boudreaux says. “Our efforts to help prairie dogs on the ground are all about regaining balance. But people are creating imbalance faster than we can restore it. Their disconnect from nature is profoundly disturbing. What will the hawks, eagles, foxes, badgers and coyotes eat without prairie dogs?”