In 1998, several citizen conservation groups petitioned the US Fish and Wildlife Service to list the species as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

In 1999, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found that the species warranted listing as a threatened species under the ESA, but was precluded from such listing by other, higher priority species.

On August 12, 2004, the Bush administration directed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove the species from a list of candidate species awaiting listing under the Endangered Species Act.

Currently, this prairie-dog is teetering on the brink of extinction, yet the Forest Service continues to spread poison-laced oats accross the public land in the midwest.

This poisoning occurs because private landowners with property adjacent to the National Grasslands complain that their land is damaged by the species,