Local developer, Karan Patel, loves animals and decided to save this large colony from near certain death during construction by moving them to a new home. Although not legally required to do so, Patel and his business partners made a commitment to do what’s right for these adorable native residents and willingly covered the majority of the costs of the translocation, with assistance from local donors, volunteers, Arizona Game and Fish, and Petrified Forest National Park, the colony’s new home. Habitat Harmony conducted the translocation in July 2018 at the corner of Route 66 and 4th Street in Flagstaff and successfully captured 105 prairie dogs from the property before it is scheduled for development.

Emily Renn, Habitat Harmony’s Translocation Coordinator said, “We’re thrilled that Karan has made this move a part of his development project, and hopeful that other developers see the value in taking care of the prairie dogs living on their properties.”

You can also check out our 2018 Translocation project Dashboard in an ArcGIS web app! You can zoom in on the map and click on the various points to see where we captured prairie dogs each day, and their sex, age, and ear tag and hair dye numbers (we tagged them so they can be followed by the biologists at the release site at Petrified Forest National Park). It was a great use of mapping technology on this project because we marked the points directly from our smart phones when we picked up the captured prairie dogs in the field, and knew exactly which other family members we have trapped at the same burrows day after day.

Open the ArcGIS Webb App