Private-public partnership aides CPW prairie dog, black-footed ferret conservation efforts

Threatening weather didn’t deter a team of six Colorado Parks and Wildlife biologists as they fanned out last week across 850 acres of Gary and Georgia Walker’s cattle ranch in Pueblo County to distribute plague vaccine hidden inside peanut butter pellets. Several of the biologists walked miles of transects across active prairie dog colonies where black-footed ferrets have been reintroduced, hand-tossing a pellet every eight yards, while a couple rode ATVs equipped with mechanical pellet shooters. Following precise routes, each biologist dropped about 50 pellets per acre across the colonies on the working cattle ranch that sprawls across U.S. Highway 50 west of Pueblo. The pellets resemble blueberries and are manufactured in a CPW lab in Fort Collins. The vaccine pellets are meant to be eaten by black-tailed prairie dogs and other small mammals that call the colonies home and will provide them with a resistance to the plague virus. After two days on the Walker Ranch, the team headed for Holly, in far eastern Colorado, to spread more vaccine across more sprawling prairie dog colonies. This is in addition to the other vaccine deployment locations across the state, all sharing the aim of protecting and preserving prairie dogs in Colorado...MORE