June 12 - June 15 & June 20 - June 22.
This week, we worked alongside the Terrestrial Wildlife crew at the Arapaho & Roosevelt National Forests & Pawnee Grassland (USFS, ARP).
On Monday, we began our prairie dog colony mapping in Pawnee National Grassland with the Terrestrial Wildlife Crew. This is an annual environmental assessment done to calculate population size by mapping the density of active burrows by acreage. We used Avenza to map colonies by walking the perimeter of pre-distinguished colonies from 2022 in order to provide analysis on whether or not the burrows are active.
Photo of the drive into Pawnee National Grassland taken by Jennifer Singer.
An active burrow exhibits little to no vegetation coverage, presence of recent scat, and or signs of life in the form of scratch marks/prairie dog prints in the dirt and or noise/chatter coming from inside the burrow. With each active burrow identified, we added a point on our map which soon created an array of points that encompassed the area in which each colony was located within the Pawnee National Grassland.
Photo of prairie dog burrow in Pawnee National Grassland taken by Jennifer Singer.
We continued prairie dog mapping on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of that week. Each day, we gained traction on new colonies and also preexisting ones. Experiencing the ecosystem in the prairie was something that surprised me; I had never thought that the prairie held such a diverse ecological community! We saw a variety of birds, lizards, toads, prairie rattlesnakes, black widows, and signs of burrowing owls.
Photo taken through binoculars of a Burrowing Owl (Athene cunicularia) by Mena Sherer.
Photo of a lizard taken by Jennifer Singer.
Unfortunately, we determined that one of the previous colonies from 2022 had potentially plagued out from this time last year. When we arrived to map the area, (which was supposed to be the biggest colony in our project), there was little to no prairie dog activity within the given space. We found small metapopulations of prairie dogs within that previous colony, but it was nothing like the preexisting survey that was provided from the past year.
Photo of Mena Sherer in Pawnee National Grassland taken by Jennifer Singer.
After the long weekend recognizing Juneteenth, we continued to map prairie dog colonies the following week on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
Photo of Jennifer Singer with pin flags in Pawnee National Grassland taken by Mena Sherer.
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