Passport to Texas

This is Passport to Texas

Prairie dogs live in connected underground burrows called “towns,” which have been known to cover up to 1,000 acres of land!

These colonies are divided into social groups usually consisting of one male, up to four females, and offspring less than two years of age. And San Angelo SP has a prairie dog town on premises.

04—Actually, we have 2 towns- we’ve established one on the north side and south side of the park.

Assistant superintendent, Pat Bales is a fan of the critters, which aren’t dogs at all, but a type of ground squirrel. Pat familiarizes us with their habits.

30—They’re most active during the cool hours of the day, during that time they’ll engage in the social activities- visiting, grooming, as well as feeding of grasses and herbs. And normally whenever they are out feeding like that, they’ll have a sentry and they’ll have a lookout. And their mounds are built up high. They’re kind of unique little engineers. They’ll build one mound, end of their mound higher than the other, and an out hole. The reason they do that: it creates a high pressure/low pressure situation which enables air to continuously flow through there. And down in the burrow itself, they’ll have little compartments where they can sleep, where they can feed.

Prairie dogs were native San Angelo, but various factors reduced their population. Fortunately, thanks to dedicated “dog” lovers – they live happily at the park.

The Wildlife and Sport Fish restoration program supports our series and is celebrating 75 years of funding diverse conservation projects throughout Texas…

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.