Mexico state and federal team with the Arizona Game and Fish Department. Photo Courtesy of Betty Dickens.

Author: Glen Dickens, President, Board of Directors, Arizona Wildlife Federation and Vice President, Board of Directors, Arizona Antelope Foundation

Glen Dickens is a retired Arizona Game and Fish Department Certified Wildlife Biologist. He is currently on the Board of the Arizona Antelope Foundation and has served as their Vice President and Projects manager since 2010. He is currently the President of the Arizona Wildlife Federation joining their board in 2010. Glen has a passion not just for wildlife, but to ensure that wildlife and habitat policies and decisions are grounded in “sound science and best governance.”

Tuesday, October 29, 2024, marked a wildlife restoration milestone when Arizona Game and Fish Department (AZGFD) biologists and volunteers delivered 98 healthy black-tailed prairie dogs (BTPD) to private ranch grasslands north of Cananea, Sonora. This reintroduction effort was possible because of the growth and success of reintroduced BTPD colonies in the Bureau of Land Management’s Las Cienegas National Conservation Area near Sonoita, Arizona.

The AZGFD team pose next to the 98 black-tailed prairie dogs being transported. Photo Courtesy of Betty Dickens.

Historically, Arizona was home to two of the five species of prairie dogs: the Gunnison’s and the black-tailed. While the Gunnison’s of northern Arizona survived efforts to remove them through poisoning from the 1920s through the 1950s, by 1960 black-tailed prairie dogs had been successfully removed from their entire range of 740,000 acres of grasslands in Santa Cruz, Pima, Cochise, and Graham counties. In response to a National Wildlife Federation 1998 petition to list the BTPD as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, a Western states recovery action plan was put in place in 2009. As a result of that National Management Plan, Arizona agreed to reintroduce BTPD to 7,100 acres in at least three counties to help the recovery of the species. 

Paco and Perrito helping transport one coterie of black-tailed prairie dogs. Photo Courtesy of Betty Dickens.

In 2008, this effort (funded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation) began in earnest in Arizona when BTPD trapped in New Mexico were re-introduced to the BLM’s Las Cienegas National Conservation Area. As of 2024, six colonies have been established in this grassland zone.

In 2011, in an effort to provide genetic diversity to the then three Las Cienegas growing colonies the AZGFD, in cooperation with the Secretariat of Environment Natural Resources and Fisheries Mexico (SEMARNAT), Comisión de Ecología y Desarrollo Sustentable del Estado de Sonora (CEDES), and a private landowner/rancher in Sonora, Mexico captured 60 BTPD in Sonora and distributed them equally to each of the three new and growing colonies in Las Cienegas. Due to circumstances that occurred over the next several years, the colony on the private ranch in Sonora failed.

Thus, this fall’s effort to return and re-establish BTPD on the same Sonoran ranch has been on the books for quite some time. The AZGFD set up camp near the sponsor colony to be trapped on October 17th to begin pre-baiting the prairie dogs. Trapping occurred on the 25th and 26th of October. 

To successfully trap and relocate prairie dogs, it is important to understand their biology. Behaviorally, all prairie dog colonies are comprised of multiple social units, referred to as coteries. A prairie dog coterie is a family unit of prairie dogs who live together within the boundary of a colony. Coteries are made up of one or two breeding males, several breeding females, and their young. In recognition of this social order and behavior, AZGFD biologists go to great lengths to identify and actually flag these family groups prior to trapping to ensure that they are caged and transported together and released as a family unit into their respective new home’s holding cage and artificial burrow (see an example of this in the photo to the right).

By Sunday night, all 98 BTPDs were snug in their respective transport cages and ready for transport in two vans (they receive both alfalfa pellets and carrots while in their transport cages…they simply love carrots!). On October 27th, biologists and other personnel from Mexico’s two wildlife agencies and their Department of Agriculture arrived. The next morning, everyone caravaned south in five vehicles to Douglas to cross into Sonora at the Aqua Prieta port of entry. The necessary inspections and paperwork took several hours to complete (prairie dogs had never been imported to Mexico!). Finally at 2 pm, with permitting completed, we headed southwest to the city of Cananea to overnight. 

Black-tailed prairie dog nibbling on a carrot. Photo Courtesy of Betty Dickens.

Arising early Tuesday morning, October 29th, the group headed north from Cananea in the dark for the hour-and-a-half drive to the ranch release site. The site had been prepared in advance by SEMINART and CEDES biologists with 25 cages and artificial burrows. Over the next several hours, the process of quietly removing the prairie dogs from the van and putting the individual family coteries into their respectively numbered and flagged artificial burrows occurred. By 3 pm, the restoration mission was completed! 

Transferring black-tailed prairie dogs to their new home. Photo Courtesy of Betty Dickens.

To this long-retired AZGFD wildlife biologist who began mapping the Gunnison’s prairie dogs in 1980, who worked on the reintroduction of the black-footed ferrets in 1996, and who encouraged the reintroduction of the BTPD to southeastern Arizona in the late 1990s, this was a moving event. I shed many a tear as I observed the respect and care that was demonstrated by each and every biologist, from both of our countries, to re-establish this little, keystone grassland species. It’s not small stuff!