UTAH PRAIRIE DOG

Description:

Female with young based on her naked swollen teats. These Prairie Dogs have come under threat from a combination of over hunting(many a red-neck likes to pass their time "shootin potguts",which they don't eat,and just leave to rot in the sun),conversion of steppe to agricultural land or in recent years real estate development , and the introduced sylvatic plague. They are listed as threatened under the U.S. endangered species act,and endangered by th IUCN, and it is now a felony to shoot these "potguts", although that doesn't stop it from happening. They also are the only terrestrial vertebrate endemic to Utah