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RMAD's WatchDog Program: A Way to Help Prairie Dogs in Your Backyard When
it comes to protecting the black-tailed prairie dog, we're often
in a reactive mode. Every week, and sometimes every day, we receive
another phone call reporting a colony in trouble. Our resources
are limited–by
the time we mobilize, it may be too late for the animals. They may
have already been bulldozed alive or poisoned. The WatchDog program will begin with a pilot program concentrated in the Denver/Boulder area. We will identify colonies most likely to be helped by intervention, minimize the threats facing colonies, and document the continuing decline of prairie dogs along the Front Range. Milestones 1. The first measure of success in the Prairie WatchDog program will be the mapping of existing colonies in the Denver/Boulder area. 2. The second measure will be the assignment of WatchDogs (persons to serve as guardians) for each mapped colony and coordinators for districts in the Denver/Boulder area. 3. The third measure of success will be the assignment of initial status to each colony. This will involve working with WatchDogs and district coordinators to identify land ownership and threats facing colonies. 4. The fourth measure of success will be to produce and distribute educational/outreach material to the public, the media, and policy-makers. This material will include printed matter and a Web site detailing colony information and highlighting imperiled and extinct colonies. During this process, we will establish an alert system through which WatchDogs can report unexpected activities on a colony. We will also log data on colonies that have already been destroyed. This will add a historical perspective to the map. When these initial steps are complete, we will evaluate the feasibility of extending the mapping along the entire Front Range and throughout the range of the black-tailed prairie dog. We will also evaluate the feasibility of creating an educational curriculum on this program. And we will make our tools and methodology available to activists in other states engaged in similar struggles on behalf of other prairie dog species. Join the WatchDog program today. We need WatchDogs, organizers, artists, computer mapping specialists, writers, and more. Give us a call at (303) 449-4422 or send an e-mail to watchdog@rmad.org. Map a colony. View and download our Colony Health form in PDF form. (To learn more about PDF docs, click here.) Document existing prairie dog colonies in your neighborhood, and estimate how large they are. Provide that information to RMAD so that we can create a regional map of this information (the Division of Wildlife mapping is already outdated). Find out (from your city or county clerk) who owns the property and what it is zoned for. If it is zoned for any type of development, also find out if development plans have been submitted to the county/municipality, where building permits have been pulled (activated), and the general schedule of development. Contact the developer. Ask what the developer’s plans are concerning the wildlife on the parcel to be developed. A) If the developer states that they will be relocated, ask who the relocator will be. B) Ask where the prairie dogs will be relocated to. This is key, as relocation sites are few and far between. Developers, of course, should be providing relocation sites because they are the ones creating the crisis (in the Denver/Boulder metro area). Then be sure to provide all of this information to the WatchDog Program. High priority: Believe it or not, even prairie dogs on open space are in trouble. Please contact RMAD if you know of a situation in which a municipality is seeking to remove or kill prairie dogs on open space. RMAD needs to get involved early in those cases, so we can fight the plan. This is a high priority because open space refuges are integral to the continued survival of the prairie dog and therefore require special protection. Pawnee National Grassland (PNG). The PNG is close to the Denver/Boulder metro area, and we should be pressuring PNG managers to take prairie dogs dislocated by development. There are few prairie dogs on the PNG, and shooting them is allowed. PLEASE COPY RMAD ON ANY E-MAIL MESSAGES, LETTERS, PHONE CALLS, OR FAXES SENT TO GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS IN REGARD TO PRAIRIE DOGS AND THE SPECIES ASSOCIATED WITH THEM. ALL CORRESPONDENCE OF THIS TYPE CAN BE SENT TO: RMAD Phone:
(303) 449-4422 RMAD’s sighting service: When reporting colonies that you are concerned about, please keep in mind that RMAD needs specific information before it can act: the location of the colony, the size, the developer’s name, phone number, a contact name, and the scheduled time frame of development. Home
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