Reversing prairie dogs' bum rap.

Today, America's five native species of prairie dog, a type of ground squirrel, colonize fewer than 500,000 hectares of U.S. grasslands -- less than 6 percent of what they called home just a century ago. Cattle ranchers have argued that by competing for forage and riddling the landscape with burrows that present stumbling hazards, these rodents reduce the livestock productivity of rangelands by 50 to 70 percent. The result: These animals have been exterminated broadly -- usually poisoned at federal expense.

But range managers should reconsider the role of prairie dogs, asserts a trio of researchers in the September CONSERVATION BIOLOGY. They cite studies indicating not only that the rodents aren't a threat to cattle, but that as "keystone" species, their presence is actually essential to the survival of some 170 western vertebrates -- among them mountain plovers, swift foxes, and endangered black-footed ferrets.

Indeed, Richard Reading of the Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative in Jackson, Wyo., and his colleagues argue, encouraging range managers to protect the nation's remaining prairie dogs "would provide educational, biological, and fiscal benefits." But they warn that efforts to counter the animals' undeserved reputation as pests will never get far as long as the U.S. government reinforces misconceptions about the prairie dog by continuing to subsidize its poisoning.