Excerpt
Chapter 8
Critical Cornerstone of a Crumbling Castle
Prairie dog colonies were once a central feature across their range: the short-grass region of the Great Plains, located east of the Rocky Mountains from Southern Alberta down into Northern Mexico. Their burrows not only house extended families, or coteries, but in larger colonies include an elaborate and lengthy tunnel system connecting separate homes.
One aggregation in Texas stretched for 100 miles, covered 25,000 square miles and housed 400 million prairie dogs. Words such as subdivision have been used to describe their colonies, but while urban sprawl (notorious for miles of blacktop and WalMart parking lots lit-up by nuclear or coal-fired power plants) Xs out wildlife habitat, prairie dog dwellings are a positive boon to the environment.
See: Prairie Dog images
Excerpt from Jim Robertson's book,
Exposing the Big Game:
Living Targets of a Dying Sport.