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About Us
About Us
Prairie Dog Pals is a non-profit 501(c)3 charity dedicated to the welfare, preservation and continuous humane care of prairie dogs within New Mexico. Our goal is to preserve natural native prairie dog habitats in appropriate areas. We help care for urban prairie dogs through supplemental care in barren areas and by relocation for preservation and population control. We also provide information and education about prairie dogs to the public.
Prairie Dog Pals serves all New Mexicans by ensuring the survival of this important species! All species of prairie dogs have plummeted to 1%-2% of their historical range and populations over the last 120 years. Prairie dogs are a keystone species important to 200 other species of wildlife as primary prey or by providing homes or shelter. Several federally protected species are dependent on prairie dogs including the Ferruginous Hawk, the Burrowing Owl, the Swift Fox and the Mountain Plover. Nine species are considered completely dependent on prairie dogs, including the Black-footed ferret, one of the most endangered mammals on earth. Prairie dogs enrich plant communities in their habitat and help to maintain the health of arid grasslands. Urban prairie dogs are much more dependent on human intervention especially during periods of drought and are constantly at peril due to encroachment and other aspects of life in developed areas. Ensuring the survival of the species is important to all New Mexicans and to our Land of Enchantment!
Mission:
Our mission is preserving the species and its habitat and to provide information and education about prairie dogs to the public.
Prairie Dog Pals of Albuquerque, New Mexico has been helping to care for prairie dogs in the city. To ensure their survival we provide supplemental feeding in barren areas. We also capture and relocate prairie dogs where loss of habitat or human conflict threatens their existence.
Mission Statement:
Prairie Dog Pals is dedicated to the welfare, preservation and continuous humane care of urban prairie dogs within New Mexico.
Prairie Dog Pals will foster an ongoing and collaborative effort between the organization, cities, counties, state and federal agencies.
Prairie Dog Pals will maintain a procedure for regular and emergency communications to all entities.
Prairie Dog Pals will monitor existing and/or ancestral prairie dog colonies or sites for joint assessment and disposition.
Prairie Dog Pals will maintain a state-of-the-art protocol for the humane relocation of prairie dogs from unsuitable encroachments
Prairie Dog Pals will develop and maintain educational materials to promote public awareness about the importance of prairie dogs within the ecosystem and encourage stewardship by the citizens.
Prairie Dog Pals will strive to obtain commitments to provide stewardship of urban Prairie Dogs by development of published public policy detailing protocols for their protection and welfare.
Prairie Dog Pals will strive to obtain commitments to provide stewardship of existing approved sites as open-air zoos.
Prairie Dog Pals will network and collaborate with regional and national organizations committed to protecting endangered species of prairie dogs.
Goals
- To preserve appropriate areas of land for prairie dogs naturally existing in the Greater Albuquerque Area.
- To have all counties with naturally existing prairie dogs preserve areas of natural habitat for them.
- To have public lands which are leased to allow prairie dogs and other native wildlife to co-exist with humans and domestic animals.
Programs
Prairie Dog Pals maintains three programs that are supported by volunteers and donations:
Volunteers provide care, supplemental feeding, and monitoring at over 35 sites within the city of Albuquerque. Ideally prairie dogs need not be fed, however, in the urban setting the native vegetation is often inadequate to support the resident population. In these situations, volunteers provide appropriate food to sustain the prairie dogs. Populations are thinned when appropriate.
Perhaps our best outreach opportunities are those not pictured. This occur when our volunteers interface with interested, sympathetic, and sometimes-hostile passers by. It is very difficult to dispel rumor, fear, legend and years of accumulated bias, however, an open mind is a fertile place and our volunteers do their best to dispel fantasy with fact and reason.
Prairie Dog Pals’ volunteers meet with schools, scout troops, church groups, neighborhood associations, pueblos, city, state and government agencies, special interest groups and societies, and the general public to provide information and education about prairie dogs, their habitat, and their preservation. A website is maintained to provide on line information about prairie dogs and their habits as well as information about other species and activities of the organization.
Prairie dogs are humanly relocated from areas where they are threatened by loss of habitat or due to human conflict. The relocation process is labor intensive and expensive and involves capture, staging, observation, relocation and release. The prairie dogs are relocated to designated natural areas.
Volunteer Opportunities
Come to a presentation! Caretake one of the sites! Help with a relocation! There is so much to do! You can help by donating items from the wish list, go to the Donation Page to find out what’s needed!
Be a spokesperson! Be a Volunteer!! Be an ADVOCATE for a Prairie Dog Site!!! Speak out, Speak up, or just speak on behalf of the Prairie Dogs!!!!!!
Coordinate with individual site care givers to ensure that the respective sites are being appropriately given care, arrange for vacation (or any absence) relief; provide training for new care givers; coordinate bulk purchasing of items (Costco/Sams), monitor and take action on changes in land usage, liaison with relocation personnel when sites are slated for development.
Ensure that the respective site(s) are being appropriately cared for by providing supplemental food and water; observe and follow up on any mischief, vandalism or changes with the authorities having jurisdiction; observe and report on any changes in intended use of the area (which would make relocation a necessity). Maintain rough counts of the resident Pds and report; monitor colony size (physical and population). Dust at season beginning and end.
Captures prairie dogs as they exit burrows that have been flushed, examines Pds for injuries, flush PD eyes with saline; mark if from multiple coteries, place in kennels, process into holding tanks.
Assists flushing live trapper by handling the hose, making the foam, observing if there is any down hole action; carrying the hose, saline solution, die and towels between flushing locations, and opening and closing the kennels. Monitors nearby burrows.
Evaluate site to determine active burrows, sets and baits traps, always monitors traps, transfers trapped prairie dogs to kennels, pick up/return kennels, traps and returns trapped prairie dogs to staging location.
Accordion Content
Assists trapper, see above. Relieves Trapper as needed.
Monitor captured prairie dogs; feed prairie dogs daily; clean cages and tanks.
Post pertinent information on the website including articles; pictures; stories; updates etc.
History
Prairie Dog Pals dates to the late ‘80s when a handful of Albuquerque residents started working together to help prairie dogs living in strips of land along Tramway Boulevard.
“They were in trouble for many reasons,” said Liz Green, who founded the group. “In some places they had no vegetation. They were considered pests and poisoned.”
At first, Green and the other volunteers focused on feeding hungry prairie dogs in areas where they did not have access to enough food. They also asked the city to stop poisoning prairie dogs and began what has become the major focus of the organization, trapping prairie dogs from overcrowded colonies and from areas where they are threatened, and relocating them to natural habitats.
In 1991 Liz decided to make things official and drafted articles of incorporation and applied for 501(c)3 non-profit status. She had to sell one of her flutes to pay for the application.
Some of the volunteers involved at the time include Diane Baptista, Bill & Linda Leary, Lynn Lucchetti, Sandy Kingham, Andrea Mulford, Vi Reinders, Terry Ryder, Kay Masters Stitelman, Sylvia Rahner and Steve Alejandro. Kay had shown Dick Westphal the Prairie Dogs at Indian School & Tramway in the fall of 2001 and he was interested in becoming active.
Kay felt Prairie Dog Pals should have a meeting before feeding began in 2002 so one was scheduled at Diane Baptistas’ home. Some of those at this meeting were Liz, Kay, Dick, Lynn, Sandy, Vi, and Yvonne and Ed. Yvonne and Ed were there because they had heard Liz give a talk at Animal Humane, sponsored by Animal Protection of New Mexico, and were interested in becoming active volunteers (Little did they know how active they were to become!!!) They had also met Paula Martin of Prairie Ecosystems at the presentation who would become instrumental in formulating many of PDP’s operating protocols. It was decided to elect officers and Yvonne was asked to be President. She declined, so Liz was elected President and Dick Vice President.
Liz had written the Mayor suggesting that signs be erected along Tramway informing the public of the nature of Prairie Dogs. People had been killing and poisoning them and destroying the water dishes volunteers had put out.
The Mayor agreed and said we should contact the Parks & Recreation Department. Dick agreed to pursue this and after getting approval from the Department of Transportation (DOT owns the land along Tramway and P&R only maintains it) he got suggestions for the copy from volunteers, had the signs printed, and made the frames. In the spring of 2003, he, Ed and Bob Stephenson erected four signs, at strategic locations, along the walking path from Indian school to Montgomery.
Liz had developed a Web Site, which had fallen into disuse, and Dick agreed to look into getting it going again. After sending the current copy to volunteers for suggestions and revisions he contacted Ben Matar, a webmaster. Once it was up and running he turned it over to Ed who has continued to make it an excellent source of information and news. After completing these projects Dick resigned as VP for personal reasons but continued as a volunteer.
On Aug. 30, 2002, things jumped to a new level when Dick witnessed workers putting poison pellets down prairie dog burrows at Sandia Vista Park. Widespread community objections spurred the city to quickly enact a moratorium on further poisoning of prairie dogs on city land.
Prairie Dog Pals met regularly with city officials for the next three months. And when the prairie dogs came out of hibernation the following spring, Prairie Dog Pals and the city launched a joint collaboration to highlight alternatives to poisoning by flushing and trapping on city park land. The first public effort, at Kennedy Middle School, on April 2, 2003 was a success and helped cement the partnership with the city.
At about the same time, Prairie Dog Pals began working with Prairie Ecosystems Associates, which had been trapping and relocating prairie dogs to safe habitat for years. Prairie Ecosystems Associates secured two relocation sites, one with a private landowner and one on tribal land. More than 1,260 prairie dogs were relocated by the summer of 2003, and Animal Protection of New Mexico gave Prairie Dog Pals the annual Milagro Award for its efforts that year.
Even though by this time the city had stopped poisoning prairie dogs and was working on humane alternatives, Kirtland Air Force Base continued a campaign to eradicate the animals on its property by poisoning them. In the process, 72 percent of the burrowing owls on the base were “lost” between 1999 and 2004. Burrowing owls, a federally protected species, rely entirely on prairie dog burrows for habitat. Prairie Dog Pals has attempted to negotiate humane removal of prairie dogs from the base or to erect a physical barrier to keep the animals from migrating from base property to adjoining city parks such as Bullhead and Phil Chacon., but has been unsuccessful.
In 2004, Forest Guardians, Prairie Dog Pals, and other groups petitioned the federal government to list the Gunnison’s prairie dog under the Endangered Species Act. They later sued and are still pursuing action!
An outbreak of monkey pox, spread by a Gambian rat to a prairie dog and then to a human put a halt on the movement of prairie dogs. The FDA initially banned the capture and relocation of prairie dogs but subsequently allowed relocation albeit under the auspices of a permit. The positive effect was an end of the pet trade as Prairie dogs could no longer be sold. Meanwhile, new FDA regulations that required permits for the relocation of prairie dogs put a temporary halt to Prairie Dog Pals’ rescue efforts, even as calls continued to come in from businesses and individuals asking for help.
In early August 2004, Albuquerque Public Schools poisoned prairie dogs on a soccer field at Hayes Middle School. Media coverage of the horrible deaths those prairie dogs suffered sparked community outrage and led to the creation of a task force of city and APS officials as well as Prairie Dog Pals to find humane solutions to prairie dogs on school property.
That year, Albuquerque Open Space land on the West Mesa was deemed suitable prairie dog habitat and the city approved funding for relocation. In five weeks, Prairie Dog Pals trapped and flushed 174/184 prairie dogs from four school campuses and three adjoining properties where their habitat had been impacted by development or conflicts with people. The group also catalogued those 174 animals with microchips, urine and fecal samples and DNA swabs as part of a University of New Mexico research project on the impact of relocation on Gunnison’s prairie dogs.
Relocations increased steadily with each passing year. In 2005, Prairie Dog Pals worked with the city to move 526 animals from APS joint-use sites and city parks and to develop additional habitat on the West Mesa. In 2006, that number jumped to 1,065 animals who were moved from city and school sites while another 118 were relocated from private property through collaborations with developers, property managers and homeowners. In 2007, a total of 1,914 prairie dogs were relocated, some of them to habitat made available at the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge. And in 2008, total captures reached 2,027.
Throughout these efforts, Prairie Dog Pals has continued to search for funding and habitat. The business of relocating prairie dogs is expensive even with volunteers providing much of the labor. There are equipment and material needs as well as food and veterinary care. And while many volunteers continue to feed prairie dogs at various sites around the city and to help with trapping, relocation and other efforts, the organization has grown with the addition of volunteer interns as well as part time paid staff, including two biologists and Ellie, who can do it all!
Prairie Dog Pals volunteers also provide educational outreach to hundreds of people at special events such as the La Montanita Co-op Earth Day festival, Albuquerque’s first annual Fetch-a-palooza event, the Watermelon Mountain Ranch adopt-a-thon and at schools and group meetings. And on Earth Day 2007, the first ever Prairie Dog Pal-ooza drew more than 150 attendees. Northern Arizona University biology professor Dr. Con Slobodchikoff gave a talk on the language of prairie dogs.
Prairie Dog Pals continues to have a voice in national conservation efforts through its membership in the Prairie Dog Coalition and by signing on to Forest Guardian’s lawsuit to force the federal government to protect the Gunnison’s prairie dog under the Endangered Species Act.
Prairie Dog Pals has been recognized and honored for their achievements. In 2003, Prairie Dog Pals was given a Milagro Award by Animal Protection of New Mexico for Direct Animal Services for extraordinary efforts to preserve prairie dog habitat, and their campaign that stopped prairie dog poisoning in Albuquerque. In 2008, President Yvonne Boudreaux and Operations Manager Ed Urbanski were honored with the Conservationist of the Year award from the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance for their dedication. In 2012 Prairie Dog Pals was awarded the Humane Hero Award by the Prairie Dog Coalition for the housing, care and release of over 300 prairie dogs that were involved with a hoarding situation.
To be continued…
Documents
Following are links to several documents we regularly use to spread the word.
The trifold folds up into a letter size document. It contains information about prairie dogs and Prairie Dog Pals. It is an easy way to spread the word. To see the document click on the link Trifold.
This document contains the methods that govern our day-to-day operations concerning rescue and relocation. To see the document click on the link Protocols.
This document gives a brief overview of the relocation process. To see the document click on the link PD Relocation.
This document provides some ideas about site improvements when the natural vegetation is not sufficient to support the indigenous prairie dogs. To see the document click on the link Habitat Improvement.
If you wish to volunteer with Prairie Dog Pans you will need to sign a waiver of liability. To see the document click on the link Waiver.