Thus the cuddly prairie dog becomes the Bambi for the new century, and a pretty smart one at that. After all, they dwell out West where they will never be seen by the vast eastern establishment except in cute pictures. In return for their spots on the planet, prairie dogs reward our environment with burrows that, among other things, according to National Geographic, provide safe haven for rattlesnakes, black widow spiders and the Easter tiger salamander. If NWF's petition is successful, it will mean that sport hunting of prairie dogs would become unlawful, as would controlling their numbers by poisoning or other means. Actually, the black-tailed variety is the most common prairie dog of all, ranging over western states by the millions upon millions.
Some ranchers now consider the income from prairie-dog shooters on a par with other ranch products.
Prairie dogs are only a tactical stepping stone in their overall strategy of ending all sport hunting and fishing. And without sport hunting, the anti-gunners would rise to claim that there is no further legitimate purpose for gun ownership by citizens. This time, though, they dealt us a better hand than they intended, because the fact of the matter is that at present the recreational shooter is the prairie dog's best friend and its best hope for long-term survival. And for every bullet that is fired at a prairie dog, a percentage of its cost, and that of the rifle that fired it, helps pay for maintaining all wildlife via Pittman-Robertson funds. A tragic irony of the NWF's petition to declare the prairie dog a threatened species is that if it succeeds it will, in fact, cause the immediate death of untold millions of prairie dogs and total elimination of many vast dog towns.