The black-tailed prairie dog historically existed across the Great Plains from northern Mexico to southern Canada. The native species suffered a dramatic fragmentation of their range and a severe population decline in the late twentieth century.
In the latest population survey taken in 2006, the black-tailed prairie dog population was less than 2% of its historic numbers because of human actions %u2026 primarily large-scale poisoning operations.
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,
