Colorado Works To Bolster Gunnison's Prairie Dog

DENVER (AP) - State wildlife officials are trying to combat plague in order to shore up populations of Gunnison's prairie dog, a species that's considered a candidate for federal protection.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has said the species is eligible for protection in central and south-central Colorado and north-central New Mexico under the Endangered Species Act, but it hasn't been formally listed yet because other species are higher priorities.

The state wants to make sure the animal doesn't get listed in Colorado as threatened or endangered, a consideration that could lead to federally mandated regulations or land use restrictions.

"The largest threat to the species is disease, and specifically plague," said Amy Seglund, a species conservation coordinator for the division.

Last year, the division started experimenting with dusting four to five grams of the insecticide Deltamethrin in the animals' burrows to kill fleas that spread the plague. Employees using handheld equipment dusted on 552 acres, mostly in the Gunnison area.

A similar area of federal, state and private land belonging to participating owners will likely be dusted this year, with researchers noting results of differences in the timing of when insecticide is applied.

The cost of dusting is around $12 an acre, which would mean about $6,600 last year, said Division of Wildlife disease researcher Dan Tripp.

Researchers are developing a vaccine for plague, but until one is available, dusting is wildlife officials' only tool for combatting it, Tripp said.

Because plague is a nonnative disease in North America, the animals are not immune to it, Tripp said.

Often considered a pest in agriculture, prairie dogs have been viewed as a keystone species by many ecologists. Their burrows provide dens for other animals, and they are food for the endangered black-footed ferret and hawks, among others.

Farms have provided prairie dogs with food, but they also have split up land that was once the animals' habitat. When a colony gets wiped out by plague, it can be tough to recover if another colony isn't nearby to help it repopulate.

Besides curbing plague, the state's Division of Wildlife is monitoring the state's populations of Gunnison's prairie dogs and working with the University of Colorado on a genetic study to determine whether a subspecies exists.

- By Catherine Tsai, AP Writer

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