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Species Profile

Welcome to our prairie species profiles. The goal of this section is to introduce readers to the species that share the Plains with us.

Burrowing Owl

The burrowing owl is found in the Great Plains from southern Canada to Mexico. They are the only North American owl that nests underground, establishing nest burrows primarily in prairie dog holes or badger burrows.
Standing only 8-9 inches high, these diminutive owls are very efficient predators, hunting day or night, feeding on a diversity of prey items including crickets, mice, small birds and snakes.

The burrowing owls overall numbers are in decline in the Great Plains. Their fate tied to conservation of the prairie ecosystem in general and burrowing mammal colonies in particular. Over the last several decades they have suffered dramatic declines and range contraction throughout the West, due to habitat loss, fragmentation and degradation of habitat due to widespread control and extermination of prairie dogs and ground squirrels, as well as conversion of grasslands to irrigation and development.

Large, unfragmented prairie dog towns are a key component to the survival of the owl. As large prairie dog towns go, so goes the burrowing owl.

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Swift Fox

Not much bigger than a house cat, the swift fox lives primarily in the short-grass prairie region of the Western High Plains stretching from the Canadian prairies where they were once e then reintroduced in the 1970s, to points south through parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico.

Omnivorous, outwardly affectionate and highly social, swift foxes often live in close proximity to prairie dog town or other burrowing mammal colonies where they find most their prey. Today they are an imperiled species, and they exist in less than 40 percent of their original historic range.

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Black-Footed Ferret

Long a symbol for conservation, the black-footed ferret was feared extinct until a Wyoming rancher's dog brought a dead one home in the 1980s. The discovery of this last remnant population allowed captive breeding efforts to begin and save the species. Today, many ferrets have been returned to the wild, though inbreeding and disease threaten its survival over the long term.

The loss of habitat is the main reason why ferrets hover near
extinction to this day. The conversion of the prairie for agriculture resulted in a war on the ferret's primary food source, the prairie dog. Remnant prairie dog towns are often small and isolated, allowing diseases such as canine distemper and sylvatic plague to run rampant.

Of the several sites throughout the High Plains where ferrets have been reintroduced, they are thriving only in the Kanata Basin of South Dakota.

Even so, state officials recently poisoned off thousands of acres of prairie dog/ferret habitat on the outskirts of the Basin at the request of area ranchers.

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Bighorn Sheep

Big horn sheep
At the beginning of the 19th century, the bighorn sheep was once estimated to have a population between 1.5 and 2 million, and ranged from central British Columbia to northern Mexico. Today less than 70,000 remain. Hunting, competition from livestock grazing and disease decimated the populations historically. By the 1920's, an entire subspecies of bighorn sheep, the Audubon bighorn, which inhabited parts of the grasslands of Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming and Nebraska was extinct.

Even though the Audubon bighorn is gone, many bighorn populations have been re-established to parts of their former range in the northern Plains thanks to closly monitored transplant and reintroduction programs where they roam in small wild groups in places like the Black Hills and badlands of western South Dakota. Genetic diversity, habitat loss and associated human disturbance are considered their major threats today.

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Greater Prairie Chicken

The prairie chicken's sunrise chorus of harmonic booms on its springtime booming grounds are a definitive a sound of the Great Plains as the howl of the coyote and their presence is as important a symbol of the prairie as the bison. Historically, prairie chickens were abundant throughout the 400,000 square miles of tall-grass prairie in the heart of the North American continent, yet today 99 percent of the tall-grass prairie is gone, lost to agricultural conversion or development.

Today many of the Plains states prairie chicken populations are now either listed as threatened, endangered or extinct, and the overall picture for prairie grouse species is poor.

There are a couple of ways to help this animal
To fund captive breeding:
The Adopt-a-Prairie-Chicken Program
Texas Parks and Wildlife
Wildlife Diversity Program
4200 Smith School Road
Austin, TX 78744
1-800-792-1112

To buy more habitat:
The Attwater's Prairie-Chicken Habitat Fund
P.O. Box 1440
San Antonio, TX 78295-1440
210-224-8774

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Black Tailed Prairie Dog


Photo by Joel Sartore
There are actually five species of prairie dogs in North America, but the one people are most familiar with is probably the Black Tailed Prairie Dog.

Its historic range was from Mexico to Canada and from the Rockies to Eastern Nebraska and South Dakota. Unfortunately, habitat loss, poisoning and other control measures have reduced its numbers by nearly 99 percent from pre-European settlement times.

Prairie dogs live in group "settlements" called towns. They build their homes by burrowing into the ground. This activity creates mounds around the entrances to the burrows. They eat grasses and forbes, keeping the area surrounding their towns clipped low to the ground. The fact they dig up the landscape and eat forage makes them pests in the view of many ranchers.

But from a wildlife point of view, they make the prairie come alive. Their burrows are home to other prairie species like burrowing owls, snakes, reptiles, and amphibians. And prairie dogs are a prey source for many other species, like the swift fox, coyotes, badgers, and birds of prey. These creatures create their own ecosystem and a visit to a town will delight a wildlife enthusiast.

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Salt Creek Tiger Beetle


Photo by Joel Sartore

The Salt Creek Tiger Beetle is an insect that exists only in the inland salt marshes around Lincoln, Nebraska. Down to just several hundred adults each summer, this critically endangered animal is losing habitat at a current rate that could easily make it extinct in the next few years.

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