Greycliff Prairie Dog Town             Photo taken Oct 1999 by Wayne Burleson

Do prairie dog activities = healthy biological diversity or overgrazed rangeland?

This land is in Phase I - that is the land, plants, and soils are under stress from year-long disturbances caused by black-tail prairie dog activities. 

What kind of stress are the prairie dogs causing:
    * There is a serious soil erosion problem - spreading yearly.  
    * Weedy (no-eat-um) plants species are invading.
    * The mineral/nutrient cycle is poor.  
    * The percent bare ground is high - over 50%.
    * There is a water quality problem because of the surface soil water movement.
    * There is a very poor energy flow.
    * On hot days, the sunlight energy is over-heating the bare soils (130 deg. F. plus).

This prairie dog community has moved across the I-90 Interstate and spread one mile down the highway to the school grounds in Greycliff, Montana.

The real question here - is this amount of rangeland disturbance really providing a healthy biological diversity if left uncontrolled?

There is a need for limited, controllable prairie dog communities, but because the natural predators have been reduced or removed, this kind of disturbance to rangeland can and will spread, becoming out of balance with the other important natural resources.

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