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Book Review
| Prairie Dog Empire: A Saga of the Shortgrass Prairie. By Paul A. Johnsgard. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. xvi + 243 pp. Illustrations, maps, tables, appendix, bibliography, index. $29.95.
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| Forty years after producing the first of nearly fifty books, Paul Johnsgard favors us with Prairie Dog Empire. In 2002, Johnsgard attended a meeting of the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, which was considering whether to in-itiate a conservation program for black-tailed prairie dogs. Conservationists and biologists testified on one side, ranchers on the other. The commissioners sided with the ranchers: no state-supported program would be forthcoming. Dismayed, Johnsgard picked up his pen, both to write and to illustrate his latest book. |
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He begins with a short history of the shortgrass prairie. Next is "A Buffalo Nation," the saga of bison from their discovery and exploitation to their conservation and recovery, followed by five more chapters devoted to plains wildlife. These begin with the ecology and status of the five species of prairie dog endemic to North America, including behavioral information—one of Johnsgard's fortes—and features the black-tailed prairie dog, the best studied of the group and the focus of the book. The remaining chapters in this section deal respectively with mammalian predators (e.g., black-footed ferrets), associates of prairie dog towns (e.g., burrowing owls), other plains wildlife (e.g., pronghorn), and raptors (e.g., ferruginous hawks). |
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"The Varmint and Predator Wars," one of the concluding four chapters, recites government efforts to control so-called undesirable wildlife. Beginning early in the last century, black-tailed prairie dogs were among the main targets, thanks in part to one government official who opined that prairie dogs reduced rangeland productivity by 75 percent (biologists today dispute this assertion). One might wonder how, in pristine times, millions of bison could have survived in such rodent-depleted grasslands, but prairie dogs nonetheless were poisoned en mass to further agricultural production. As a result, 99 percent of the historic range of the black-tailed prairie dog disappeared, yet in 2004 the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed the species from a list of potential candidates for federal protection. |
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"Taming the Great American Desert" (Chapter 9) recounts the history of plains settlement. The final chapter assesses the daunting efforts to preserve the few remaining areas of shortgrass prairie. As Johnsgard relates, the three-hundred-year-long period in which natural resources seemed unlimited has ended, and we now face a short-lived window of opportunity to save what remains. A state-by-state guide to the national grasslands and nature preserves in the shortgrass region appends the text, followed by a list of sources for each chapter. |
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The book is nicely formatted, though few typos crept in (for example, "downs" for towns on p.85) as do lapses into passive voice. With one or two exceptions, the drawings are well done. Surprisingly, the Popper's provocative concept for a Buffalo Commons escaped mention in Chapter 11, nor is Dan Flores' acclaimed study of bison referenced in Chapter 2, and more could have been said about the competition between prairie dogs and livestock. While not intended to be an exhaustive study of either the ecology or conservation of shortgrass prairies, the book offers lay readers a welcome introduction to key points about each. All told, Prairie Dog Empire helps keep alive the dwindling awareness of a vibrant but beleaguered ecosystem that may otherwise fade into the mist of yesterday. |
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Eric G. Bolen is a former graduate dean and now professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. His books include Ecology of North America (Wiley, 1998) and Wildlife Ecology and Management (Prentice Hall, 2002). |
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