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A colony of prairie dogs was rescued from Canyon, near Amarillo, and brought to the Fort Worth Nature Center & Refuge in August. (Courtesy photo | Megan McConnell)
” data-medium-file=”https://fortworthreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/FWNCR-Prairie-Dogs-1-by-Megan-McConnell.jpg?fit=225%2C300&ssl=1″ data-large-file=”https://fortworthreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/FWNCR-Prairie-Dogs-1-by-Megan-McConnell.jpg?fit=768,1024&ssl=1″ tabindex=”0″ role=”button”>A new group of furry residents are calling the Fort Worth Nature Center & Refuge home. Nature center leaders announced the arrival of 90 black-tailed prairie dogs earlier this week. Jared Wood, the acting manager for the nature center, said the colony was originally located in Canyon, where their home south of Amarillo was set to become a new housing development. The construction would have destroyed the prairie dogs’ habitat.“As my team was working with the prairie dogs, you could see the bulldozers in the background, paving the way for the housing development,” Wood said. In collaboration with the nonprofit Friends of the Fort Worth Nature Center & Refuge, the team — which included nature center natural resource staff members Nic Martinez and David Reasoner and friends board member Megan McConnell — traveled to Canyon on Aug. 15 on what they describe as a “rescue mission.”“Reestablishing a prairie dog colony really illustrates the long-standing collaboration between the nature center and the friends,” said Chris Smith, the executive director of the Friends of the Fort Worth Nature Center & Refuge. This isn’t the first time a prairie dog colony has been housed at the nature center. Wood said the nature center originally had a prairie dog population that disappeared in 2015 perhaps due to disease, officials said. “Plague outbreaks in prairie dog colonies are more common than we would like,” Wood said. “But no one actually knows with 100% certainty what happened to the prairie dog colony in 2015, so we can only speculate.” 
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That disappearance drove the team to take careful steps to ensure this new population is safe and acclimated in the new environment. While the nature center is an area that can give these prairie dogs a habitat, it’s not fully ideal, Wood said.For prairie dogs, the ideal environment would be an open plain, with an abundance of grass and a mixture of sand and clay for soil that allows them to dig their burrows. The nature center, on the other hand, lacks the wide-open short-grass prairies that are prevalent in West Texas. Also the nature center’s soil has a high clay content that can make it difficult to dig when dry.“We have to clear brush and mow the pocket prairies to make them ideal for the dogs,” Wood said. After diligently researching the best habitat for the creatures, nature center staff created artificial burrows where they would be released, the better to ensure the dogs could establish their own burrow system and more easily acclimate to the land.Additionally, the team used different measures to prevent future diseases from affecting the population, such as flea control bait.Although this relocation is exciting, it’s uncertain how successful it will be for the prairie dogs, Wood said. “We want people to come and enjoy this place, we want news about the prairie dogs out there,” Wood said. “But we also want to be honest in that we cannot guarantee the success of the colony. We don’t really know until we hit next spring if we’ll see reproduction.”Regardless, the nature center will continue to support the colony, he said. Wood said the prairie dogs are currently in two locations at the nature center. One is the eastern pasture, which visitors can see from the bison viewing deck. Wood points out that historically, bison and prairie dogs have coexisted and benefited from one another. Visitors take in the sights at the new bison viewing decks at the Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge on April 27, 2023. (Cristian ArguetaSoto | Fort Worth Report)As bison graze the vegetation near the area, they lower the grass levels and allow prairie dogs enough vision to detect predators. In return, prairie dogs improve the health of the soil, allowing for more nutrient-dense grass. “The nature center is a really neat area because it’s on the line between Eastern Cross Timbers and the Western Grasslands,” Wood said. “So when you have kind of a weird mixture of everything, where else can you see bison and alligators and prairie dogs, it’s where the East meets the West, right? Fort Worth is where the West begins.”Prairie dogs are also building their habitat in a remote location that is inaccessible to the public at the moment, as the nature center believes that area has a high probability of success for the prairie dogs acclimatization. Wood and Smith said they hope the relocation of the animals will be an important educational resource for visitors, allowing them to understand the value of not only the nature center, but also the environment that surrounds it. “Maybe people connect to the plants, maybe they connect to the bison, maybe they connect to the butterflies, to the alligators, just to being out and away from the business of downtown,” Wood said. “Prairie dogs are another way for people to connect.” Kevin Vu is a recent graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and contributor to the Fort Worth Report.