Gunnison's Prairie Dog Relocation Project: Vegetation Cover Data from the Sevilleta National Wildife Refuge, New Mexico (2005- )

Prairie dogs are keystone species that impact both animals and plants in grassland
habitats. They are a food resource for secondary consumers such as badgers, foxes, and
raptors. Also, the mounds that they construct are home to many arthropod and reptile
species that otherwise might not survive in grasslands. Both Gunnison’s and black-tailed
prairie dogs can increase the number of plant species in grasslands and landscape
heterogeneity with their ecosystem engineering that creates disturbed patches on the
landscape. Gunnison’s prairie dogs, which were native herbivores at the Sevilleta National
Wildlife Refuge (NWR) before their populations disappeared, were reintroduced at the
Sevilleta NWR in 1997, 2005, and 2008. In 1998, a Gunnison’s prairie dog colony naturally
established along the northern border on the east side of the Refuge. The naturally
occurring colony and the colony that was reintroduced in 1997 have since then severely
declined or gone locally extinct. Still, with the removal of cattle from the Sevilleta in
1973, the reintroductions of Gunnison’s prairie dogs in 2005 and 2008 provides an
interesting opportunity to study how a native keystone herbivore affects a grassland
habitat without the pressures and competition from livestock.