LEARNING TO LIVE WITH PRAIRIE DOGS - A pair of Montana ranchers is showing that cowherds can exist in harmony with these native animals

National Wildlife, April-May, 2001 by Christie Aschwanden

Despite these threats, agricultural groups oppose listing the prairie dog. Many ranchers see efforts to list the species as a threat to their businesses, and others question the motives behind the petition. "I think this whole prairie dog thing is part of the big conspiracy by the National Wildlife Federation to depopulate the West," rancher Jim Darlington of New Castle, Wyoming, told The Washington Post.

Among the threats posed by the species, many ranchers claim, is that cows and horses break their legs in prairie dog holes. But that's nonsense, says researcher Larry Rittenhouse of Colorado State University. "It would be almost impossible for a cow to break its leg on a prairie dog hole," he says. "I study these animals' behavior, and they are extremely adept at placing their feet. In my 50 years around cattle and horses, I don't personally know of a single incident where a horse or a cow has been injured in a prairie dog hole."

Nor do cattle avoid prairie dog towns. Jim Detling, an ecologist at Colorado State University, has studied prairie dog towns in the mixed- grass prairies of South Dakota. His research shows that bison and pronghorn preferentially graze on prairie dog towns, and cattle seem to do the same. The forage on prairie dog towns is highly nutritious, Detling adds. "We've found that there's a significant increase in the protein content of the plants growing on prairie dog towns," he says. Though cattle seem to prefer prairie dog towns in mixed-grass prairies, work by one of Detling's former graduate students, Debra Guenther, shows that in shortgrass prairies cows neither prefer nor avoid prairie dog towns.

This finding echoes what ranch manager Webb Madison has seen at Twin Buttes. "I don't think the cattle mind the prairie dogs. They don't seem to give them much consideration," he says. But most ranchers- including those in Roundup-don't see it that way. Tranel Jr. was filling up his gas tank at a local station recently when he overheard some other patrons talking about "those crazy Tranels and their funny ideas."

But Tranel Jr. says their profits show he and his father are wily, not crazy. At the same time, he acknowledges that their success is reliant, in part, on the ranch's vast size. "If you have 2,000 acres and 600 of them are a prairie dog town, that's a lot different than when you have 12,000 acres. The impact is larger when your pasture is small," says Tranel Jr. The studies showing that prairie dog towns don't harm cattle may not apply when the dog towns start taking up a larger portion of the landscape, says Rittenhouse.

The key to harmony between prairie dog conservation efforts and ranching, says Steve Torbit, an NWF biologist, is to protect large prairie dog towns where livestock grazing can be rotated seasonally. "This gives us the biggest bang for our conservation buck," Torbit says. To this end, the Tranels have teamed up with The Nature Conservancy to purchase and protect the Matador Ranch, a 60,000-acre parcel in northeast Montana that has several extensive prairie dog towns.