America’s Prairie Dog Jihad
How myths, politics, and poisons like Rozol are pushing prairie dogs — and the wildlife that depend on them — toward collapse.
by Ted Williams
I have spent decades trying to understand America’s war on prairie dogs, a keystone species whose colonies support more than 150 other animals on the Great Plains.
Varminters, who call themselves “hunters,” shoot them by the tens of thousands, leaving them where they drop. Ranchers and the federal government poison them by the hundreds of thousands with biocides such as Rozol, an anticoagulant rodenticide that causes secondary poisonings in raptors and mammals that eat the poisoned prairie dogs. It also directly poisons birds and small mammals that feed on the treated grain.
Rozol-poisoned prairie dogs convulse and stagger for as long as three weeks before dying, dinner bells for raptors and mammals, including critically endangered species such as the northern aplomado falcon, black-footed ferret and Mexican wolf.
This warning from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, even though it approved Rozol in 2009: “[Rozol’s] active ingredients can be especially harmful to animals that eat poisoned prairie dogs. These animals include raptors, like eagles and large hawks, and predators, like swift foxes and black-footed ferrets. Exposure of non-target animals to the anticoagulant rodenticide occurs either directly, by feeding on the bait, or secondarily, by consuming poisoned prey. A prairie dog may live for 1 to 3 weeks after it first ingests the bait. During this time, the prairie dog can accumulate the pesticide in its tissues from multiple feedings, resulting in symptoms including loss of attentiveness, lethargy, swollen or closed eyes… The number of non-target animals, including raptors and predators, that die from exposure to anticoagulant prairie dog bait is believed to be higher than what is typically reported because of the amount of time it takes for an animal to succumb to the pesticide.”
In their poisoning campaign, ranchers are assisted by the USDA’s Wildlife Services as well as the U.S. Forest Service, which, despite the fact that it lists the black-tailed prairie dog as a “sensitive species,” amended its management plan in 2020 to prioritize lethal control near private lands, including areas designated for prairie dog conservation.
Prairie dogs are ground squirrels that sound and act like dogs. They bark, sit erect, wag their tails, wrestle like puppies, and exchange “kisses” with jaws agape. Throughout the West, at least 95% of the black-tailed prairie dogs — the most widely distributed of the five species — have been eliminated by land use change, poisons, shooting, and bubonic or “sylvatic” (meaning found in the wild) plague, probably introduced by stowaway rats from Asia circa 1899
Accordingly, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proclaimed in 1998 that the black-tailed prairie dog warranted listing under the Endangered Species Act as threatened. But two years later, it ruled that listing was “warranted but precluded” — bureaucratese for, “Yeah, we should do it, but we’re too busy.”
Ecological Importance of Prairie Dogs as a Keystone Species
Prairie dogs are “keystone species.” The analogy derives from the construction of stone arches. Yank out the keystone on top and you get the whole structure in your lap. Prairie dog towns provide food, shelter, and habitat for at least 150 vertebrate species, about 30 of which need prairie dogs for survival.
The consequence of America’s ongoing war on prairie dogs will be, at best, a cascade of new listings under the Endangered Species Act and, at worst, extinctions. For example, the black-footed ferret, one of the most endangered mammals in North America, cannot exist without healthy prairie dogs, its obligate prey and whose tunnels it requires for refuge.
The black-footed ferret was declared extinct until a Meeteetse, Wyo., investigator named Shep rediscovered the species in September 1981, toting a carcass back to his front steps. Shep was a ranch dog.
In 1996, the Fish and Wildlife Service set up a recovery team. “In this vast, unoccupied American West, where we reportedly used to have three billion prairie dogs, we didn’t have 10 colonies big enough for black-footed ferrets,” recovery team member Dr. Steve Torbit told me at the time.
Because the ferret population was ravaged by sylvatic plague and rapidly declining, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service evacuated all animals from the wild to breed them in captivity. Most of the environmental community, including me, opposed evacuation. If the agencies had listened to us, black-footed ferrets would now be extinct.
I hadn’t expected black-footed ferrets to be so beautiful or so small. They popped out of their artificial prairie dog burrows and fixed me with bright, alert eyes. Just to enter the breeding facility at Meeteetse, the biologists and I had to shower with disinfectant soap and don plastic suits and masks to remove and block any bacteria.
Ranchers will tell you that cattle step into prairie dog holes and break their legs. It’s a myth. It virtually never happens.
Ranchers will also tell you that prairie dogs compete with cattle for grass. They do not. Prairie dogs eat little grass. They do clip it to see predators. Cattle gravitate to prairie dog towns because prairie dogs bring rich, moist soil to the surface, aerate and fertilize the soil, improve water retention — all of which encourages the growth of forbs, grasses, and other nutritious vegetation. Attracted to prairie dog towns for the same reasons are bison, deer, and pronghorns.
According to a study by grassland ecologist Craig Knowles, “There has been no documented evidence that prairie dogs compete with domestic livestock under densities typically encountered on the Great Plains.”
The vegetation encouraged by prairie dogs is sparser than the grass outside the prairie dog towns, but it’s far more nutritious. This is why Knowles and other researchers have repeatedly documented cattle and wild ungulates seeking out prairie dog towns. “If prairie dog towns are so bad,” inquires Knowles, “why do cows like them so much? The ranchers don’t have a good response to that question.”
Varminting: How Recreational Shooting Devastates Prairie Dog Colonies
Shooting prairie dogs with high-powered rifles equipped with telescopic sights and mounted on tripods is all the rage within a small subculture in the West. The “sport,” as it’s called, is encouraged by ranchers, state game and fish agencies, and the U.S. Forest Service. The quarry is left to rot, but not before poisoning raptors and mammalian scavengers with toxic lead fragments — “plumbism.” (Go here to watch a video of the fate of these prairie dogs. NOTE: The video is violent and graphic.)
Plumbism symptoms include anemia, loss of memory, depression, brain deterioration, impotence, stillbirth, miscarriage, paralysis, and kidney and liver damage. When lead is ingested or inhaled, the body mistakes it for calcium and beneficial metals, incorporating it into nerve cells, other vital tissues, and bones. Lead bioaccumulates in bones and has a half-life of up to 40 years. Most people survive plumbism, albeit with diminished motor and cognitive function. Most wild animals succumb to starvation, disease, roadkill or predation.
Because so many raptors were dying of plumbism, Audubon of Kansas offered varminters nontoxic copper ammo at the same cost as cheaper lead bullets. After four years, it didn’t have a single taker. Varminters resist copper for no other reason than they’ve always used lead.
Copper bullets weren’t developed for any conservation purpose. They were developed strictly to kill game more efficiently, and they do. Officially, the NRA defines copper bullets as a plot by anti-hunters. But in its journal, American Hunter, it gushes about their performance.
Even back in 2010, NRA members were being told by American Hunter field editor Bryce Towsley that the Barnes all-copper X-Bullet “redefines what we think we know about hunting projectiles” — and in a good way. “I have lost count of the game I have taken with Barnes X-Bullets in various configurations,” he said.
Two years later, American Hunter awarded the Barnes VOR-TX lead-free bullet its “Ammunition Product of the Year Award.”
The irrational hatred of prairie dogs is evident in “varminters” who brag about belonging to the “Red-Mist Society” and who speak reverently of the “IVG” (instant visual gratification) they get when their bullets make prairie dogs explode in “red mist.” Some members wear red-mist T-shirts with renderings of exploding prairie dogs.
Not all ranchers hate prairie dogs. When I dropped in on rancher Gene Bertrand of Wallace, Kansas, he spoke reverently of the wild turkeys I’d seen behind his house. He told me about all the species that depend on prairie dogs and how some of those species are disappearing because so many prairie dogs are being poisoned and shot.
But even ranchers who appreciate prairie dogs eagerly host varminters at $150 per shooter, per day. “We had a nice prairie dog shooting business up until a year ago,” Bertrand said. “We averaged $25,000 a year. That’s about what I get per acre with cattle. We used to see 30 or 40 ferruginous hawks a day. They learned to come to the sound of the guns.” The money vanished with the prairie dogs. And some of the hawks vanished from plumbism.
The indiscriminate shooting of prairie dogs eliminates the ones that have survived sylvatic plague and would have passed on resistance. The species’ ability to survive future outbreaks is thereby undermined, as is the future of all the wildlife that depends on prairie dogs.
I wanted a first-hand look at varminting, so I obtained an invitation from one of the most famous prairie-dog varminters in the West — Rich Grable, known as “Mr. Dog” for his exploits with his Remington .222 rifle.
So sporting is Mr. Dog that he eschews tripods. Instead, he rests his rifle on a foam-rubber pad taped to the base of his truck window.
The day’s varminting took place on the Rosebud Sioux reservation in South Dakota.
Crack. Mr. Dog cut a target in half, sending hindquarters spinning. “Dead,” he declared, punching his dashboard-mounted kill counter. Babies, standing beside burrows with paws on siblings’ shoulders, exploded in red mist. Once, Grable killed five with a single shot.
“Can ya hear it go plop?” he cackled. “Dissolved him! Ha. Ha.” Whenever a target dragged itself back into its burrow, minus body parts, Mr. Dog would shout: “I done somethin’ to him.” According to his shooting journal, he’d killed 7,652 the previous year.
I smelled the rubber pad as it melted from the barrel heat.
Mr. Dog is not aberrant among rural Westerners. He thinks of himself as a conservationist performing a public service by saving cow grass from rodent incisors — “prairie dog control without poison,” as he puts it. In fact, he appreciates most wildlife. Yet he’s part of a ranching culture that sees the prairie dog as a divine typo in need of white-out.
Rozol Poison: The Rodenticide Killing Prairie Dogs and Their Predators
The “City of Russell Springs,” a 7-hour drive west of Kansas City, is not a major tourist destination in Kansas. No store. Population: 22. You bring your own food, and you bunk at the city’s single hotel — the Logan House, built in 1887. No management on site; $70 a night; leave your check on the desk.
Stroll outside the city limits, and you can see for 10 miles on all compass points. It’s all farm and ranch land. Save for the odd, distant grain elevator, it’s seemingly undefiled by humans. The only sounds impart a sense of peace — the rustle of cottonwoods, the buzz of cicadas, the banter of crows, magpies and jays.
But here, as in most of their range, black-tailed prairie dogs are reviled because of mythology. So a vicious war is raging between locals on one side and, on the other, wildlife, environmentalists, and what’s left of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service after Trump vandalized it.
Pete Gober was the agency’s black-footed ferret recovery coordinator until he was succeeded in 2024 by Tina Jackson of Colorado Parks and Wildlife who, for three decades, specialized in black-footed ferret conservation.
“For every dead animal you find on the ground, there might be 100 you don’t find, because nature cleans them up so quickly,” Gober told me when he was still the coordinator. “We’ve hammered EPA with our concerns about Rozol and about permitting it without ever consulting us on endangered species impacts [as required by Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act until the George W. Bush administration changed the rule, possibly illegally]. And EPA just blew us off.”
In February 2025, Jackson was dismissed along with her staff as part of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative. And black-footed ferret recovery funds were frozen. So now the program, which had spanned 12 states and multiple tribal and nonprofit partnerships, appears kaput.
Three Ph.D. scientists from the EPA’s Environmental Fate and Effects Division were ignored when they warned the George W. Bush administration that Rozol has “considerable potential for both primary and secondary risks to birds and nontarget mammals and possibly reptiles.”
Zinc phosphide, the previous poison of choice, was effective, fast-acting, and cheap. And it killed few nontarget species. But prairie dogs found it bitter, so ranchers had to condition them by “pre-baiting” with untreated grain. That was a bother.
Rozol tastes okay to prairie dogs, so you don’t have to pre-bait. According to the label, you must place Rozol-treated bait only in burrows, which isn’t always done. And you must return and bury the carcasses, something few if any ranchers would or could do because Rozol can take three weeks to kill, during which time prairie dogs leave their burrows, wander around, and slowly bleed out internally and from every orifice.
Ferruginous hawks, golden eagles, bald eagles, owls, magpies, turkey vultures, badgers, swift foxes, coyotes, raccoons, and grain eaters like wild turkeys and red-winged blackbirds have been turning up dead around prairie dog towns treated with Rozol.
Ranchers Working to Protect Prairie Dogs and Restore the Prairie Ecosystem
A few ranchers are sufficiently enlightened to cultivate prairie dogs and the myriad wildlife they sustain. But these ranchers pay the price of becoming social pariahs.
After I interviewed Gene Bertrand, I visited Larry Haverfield, his wife, Bette, and their neighbors Gordon Barnhardt and his wife, Martha. They own ranchland six miles south of Russell Springs.
“It’s not prairie dogs alone that we like; it’s the whole ecosystem that depends on them,” Gordon told me. “All kinds of amphibians and reptiles winter down those holes. Prairie dogs do cut grass, but over the long term, they dig holes, which serve as water channels. And they bring up fresh dirt, which stimulates growth of grasses and forbs. There is no other critter that does so much to benefit other species. The Fish and Wildlife Service said black-tailed prairie dogs deserve to be listed, but we’re not going to do it. Now what the hell does that mean? To me, it was a coded message to all the redneck ranchers to get those bastards poisoned now before we have to declare them threatened.”
In gathering twilight, I wandered through a prairie dog town while two border collies did figure-eights around me. Later, the Haverfields took me into their house to view photos of local swift foxes and of Larry holding a dead golden eagle apparently killed by county-applied Rozol. He’d found the bird on the Barnhardts’ property. On the wall was a poster depicting the ranch product the Haverfields and Barnhardts advocated. The caption read: “Wanted Alive: Black-footed ferrets.”
Ranchers get trapped on chemical treadmills. “When you kill off the prairie dogs, you kill off their predators,” said Larry. “So after the prairie dogs get going again, there’s nothing to control them except poison.” I asked him if prairie dogs hurt his cattle. “No,” he said. “In fact, they’re healthier with prairie dogs.”
Haverfield elicited gasps of anger and disbelief when, at a county commission meeting to coordinate an all-out Rozol offensive against prairie dogs, he rose to express his fondness for them and the wildlife they sustain. “The local paper reported ‘99 against one,’” he recalled. “And I was proud of that.”
Barnhardt and Haverfield invited Audubon of Kansas’ then-director, Ron Klataske, over to check out their prairie dog towns. Klataske, a trained wildlife biologist who had served on the black-footed ferret recovery team, was blown away. The last time a black-footed ferret was seen in Kansas was on December 31, 1957. But here, finally, were prairie dog towns large enough and healthy enough to support black-footed ferrets.
With Klataske’s help, the Haverfields and Barnhardts wrote the Fish and Wildlife Service, inviting it to assess their property for black-footed ferret reintroduction. The service deemed the site promising. As an added benefit, that part of Kansas was free of plague.
The furor over coddling prairie dogs was mild compared with the furor over the possible reintroduction of black-footed ferrets.
“I think you have to try to kill all the prairie dogs,” declared rancher and Logan County Commission chairman Carl Uhrich when I interviewed him at his house just south of Oakley. (He liked to wear a hat advertising Rozol when wildlife advocates like me were around.) “It’s just like if you got termites in your house. Do you just kill part of them? Or do you clean them all out? Ranchers don’t like having endangered species [the black-footed ferret] around because they bring all the federal rules with them. We [the commission] passed a resolution, and the Fish and Wildlife Service just ignored it and said federal law overruled local law. I said, ‘Well, you can take your ferrets and go home then.’”
The resolution, legally meaningless, wrongly called the black-footed ferret “not indigenous” and proclaimed “that no person or agency shall bring into Logan County one or more black-footed ferret or any one or more of any other species which is considered … an endangered species, a threatened species, or a sensitive species.”
The impending invasion of feds and ferrets sent the county commission and Farm Bureau into frontal assault mode. Throughout Kansas — even 100 miles east of prairie dog range — the Farm Bureau whipped gullible ranchers to a froth of paranoia with tales of how D.C. bureaucrats were scheming to use the Endangered Species Act to seize control of their property.
The commission issued prairie-dog eradication orders, citing a century-old Kansas statute that authorized county officials to enter private property “infested” with prairie dogs, “exterminate” them, then send the bill to the landowner. If Haverfield and Barnhardt could be bullied into poisoning off their prairie dogs, the feds would have no place to put their ferrets.
But Haverfield and Barnhardt refused to be bullied.
Today, black-footed ferrets are thriving on the Haverfield/Barnhardt/Blank Ranch Complex. Despite fierce local opposition, there have been supplemental releases, and reproduction has been documented every year.
This from Audubon of Kansas: “Bringing black-footed ferrets home to the shortgrass prairie of western Kansas was a hard-fought battle against entities that would rather the species became extinct. The success on the Haverfield/Barnhardt/Blank Ranch Complex has also been a testimonial to the undeterred conservation ethic of several families and their partnership with committed citizens who support restoration and protection of imperiled wildlife, and dedicated employees of the US Fish and Wildlife Service. The Logan County Commission and an anti-conservation organization continue to try to undermine the black-footed ferret recovery program and impose prairie dog eradication on landowners in the county.”
Frequently Asked Questions About Prairie Dogs and Their Conservation
Are prairie dogs endangered?
Prairie dogs are not federally listed as endangered, but their numbers have collapsed across the West. More than 95% of black-tailed prairie dogs — the most widespread of the five species — have been eliminated by habitat loss, poisoning campaigns, recreational shooting, and sylvatic plague. In 1998, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined that the black-tailed prairie dog warranted protection under the Endangered Species Act, but the listing was delayed and never implemented.
Why are prairie dogs considered a keystone species?
Prairie dogs play an ecological role far greater than their size suggests. Their burrows, grazing behavior, soil turnover, and constant vigilance support more than 150 vertebrate species, including burrowing owls, swift foxes, pronghorns, bison, and critically endangered black-footed ferrets. Removing prairie dogs destabilizes entire grassland ecosystems and triggers cascading declines in species that rely on them for food, habitat, and shelter.
Why do some ranchers want to eradicate prairie dogs?
Many ranchers believe prairie dogs compete with cattle for grass or pose hazards like broken legs — claims that research has repeatedly shown to be false. Prairie dogs consume little grass, and their colonies actually enrich the soil, increase plant diversity, and attract herbivores such as bison, deer, and pronghorns. Nevertheless, long-standing myths and pressure to maximize grazing acreage continue to drive eradication efforts.
What makes Rozol so dangerous to wildlife?
Rozol is an anticoagulant rodenticide used to poison prairie dogs. Animals that eat the bait — or prey on poisoned prairie dogs — can suffer prolonged internal hemorrhaging and die over the course of one to three weeks. Raptors, coyotes, swift foxes, badgers, ferrets, raccoons, eagles, and even wild turkeys have been found dead around treated colonies. Federal scientists have warned that Rozol poses significant primary and secondary risks to birds and mammals.
What is “varminting,” and how does it affect prairie dogs?
“Varminting” refers to recreational shooting of prairie dogs with high-powered rifles, often for entertainment rather than management. Shooters may kill hundreds of animals in a day, leaving carcasses in the field where scavengers ingest toxic lead fragments. Varminting also removes the individuals that have survived plague outbreaks — those most likely to pass on resistance weakening the species’ long-term resilience.
How are prairie dogs connected to black-footed ferrets?
Black-footed ferrets are entirely dependent on prairie dogs. They live in prairie dog burrows and rely on the rodents as their primary food source. When prairie dog numbers plummet, ferret populations collapse. Every successful ferret reintroduction site requires large, healthy, plague-free prairie dog colonies — making prairie dog conservation a prerequisite for ferret recovery.
Do prairie dogs damage cattle rangeland?
Despite widespread belief, research has found no significant competition between prairie dogs and cattle at typical colony densities. In fact, cattle often seek out prairie dog towns because the animals’ digging aerates soil, increases water infiltration, and encourages the growth of nutrient-rich forbs and grasses. Prairie dog towns may look sparse, but the vegetation they support is often more nutritious than surrounding pasture.
Is plague a natural predator of prairie dogs?
The sylvatic plague that devastates prairie dog colonies is not native to North America. It was introduced around 1899, likely by stowaway rats arriving on ships. Because prairie dogs evolved with no immunity, plague can wipe out entire colonies in a matter of weeks. Conservation programs now use vaccines and treatments in some areas to boost survival.
Can prairie dogs and ranching coexist?
Yes. Several ranchers in the West have demonstrated that cattle production and thriving prairie dog colonies are fully compatible — and can even reinforce each other through healthier soils and increased biodiversity. These ranchers often become targets of local hostility, but their lands have hosted some of the most successful black-footed ferret reintroductions in the country.
Ted Williams, a lifelong angler and fair-chase hunter, writes exclusively about fish and wildlife. He serves on the Circle of Chiefs of the Outdoor Writers Association of America and is a former information officer for the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. This piece was updated and adapted from sections of his reporting for Audubon, Mother Jones and The Nature Conservancy’s Cool Green Science.