to prevent flooding or for power generation. … As we planted more trees on the Great Plains, we also created a way for Eastern andWestern species to move across the barriers of the Great Plains.” Chemicals, pesticides, and mining pose further threats.
“With all of this,” she adds, “you could see how there would be species on the edge.”
Under Hays’ direction, the Forest Service began applying dust around the colonies to kill plague-carrying fleas. Since prairie dogs prefer low grasses to better detect predators, the agency began setting controlled fires to encourage them to move into new territories, at the same time letting grass grow tall around potential conflict zones. The Forest Service also banned prairie dog shooting in the area designated for ferret release. Poisoning, officials decided, was to be undertaken only under limited circumstances, such as a threat to public health or safety.
The first test of the new management plan came after a local resident approached the Forest Service last year about removing two colonies on Thunder Basin land near his property. Officials wanted to pursue nonlethal strategies. Relocation topped their list, but they had no experience moving prairie dogs.
At a ferret recovery meeting in Colorado in early 2010, The HSUS’s Sterling Krank asked if the agency had considered such an option, says Forest Service wildlife biologist Cristi Painter, who helped develop the new management plan. “We said, ‘We’ve thought about it, but we don’t have enough money,’ ” recalls Painter. “ ‘We don’t have enough equipment.We don’t have enough help. And we don’t know how to do it.’ ”
As director of the Prairie Dog Coalition, which became a program of The HSUS in late 2009, Sterling Krank quickly rallied troops from The HSUS and other conservation groups—Defenders of Wildlife,World Wildlife Fund-U.S., and Biodiversity Conservation Alliance. “We all started talking to each other and the whole thing started to swirl,” Painter says. The HSUS became a major player in the endeavor, providing equipment and supplies, funding, and onsite training for the Forest Service.