PDC and other groups this year provided recommendations for updating State Wildlife Action Plans. Part of that effort included several experts creating a table of Species of Greatest Conservation Need (SGCN), designed to show the overlap of species within the grassland ecosystem. The authors of this list found at total of 62 of listed SGCN with either strong or some documented positive association with prairie dog colonies.
The importance of this list is to demonstrate the ecosystem engineering component the prairie dog fills in the grassland ecosystem, and that we should make sure our wildlife and land management agencies know about the significant impact prairie dogs have on grassland conservation. PDC and our conservation community plans to use this list as a tool to showcase the multiple species benefitted when we invest in black-footed ferret and prairie dog ecosystem conservation efforts.
Balunek, E., Hughes, J., Jackson, T., McCusker, B., Reading, R., VanPelt, W. and Sterling Krank, L. 2026. State Wildlife Action Plan/Species of Greatest Conservation Need list of species benefitting from prairie dog and black-footed ferret conservation. [Updated from Kotliar et al. 1999, Slobodchikoff 2009 & Reading 2009 & 2019 (unpublished)].