TEXAS \u2014 At first glance, a sprawling field behind gates at the Fort Worth Nature Center & Refuge appears empty. But when a vulture comes swooping over, the land erupts in high pitched squeals. It\u2019s prairie dogs alerting each other of danger.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think they\u2019re so cute and adorable, and they remind me of little cats,\u201d said Tommy Tavarez, who\u2019s watching the prairie dogs. \u201cI saw two of them right next to each other playing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re a favorite part of the refuge,\u201d said Dr. Jared Wood, with the Fort Worth Nature Center & Refuge. \u201cThey\u2019ve been here for decades.\u201d<\/p>\n
But in 2015, they vanished from the nature center.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy the end of that year, they were gone,\u201d said Wood.<\/p>\n
Prairie dog town in Fort Worth became a ghost town.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one really knows what happened,\u201d said Wood. \u201cThey suspect disease, cold, wet weather might have played a factor in the demise.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wood and a team from the refuge drove out to West Texas and launched a two-year project to bring the prairie dogs back.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we had to focus on was let\u2019s find colonies in need of rescue and let\u2019s start there because at least we can give them a chance,\u201d said Wood.<\/p>\n
So far, about 100 prairie dogs have burrowed into the ground here.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first colony we introduced has reproduced twice and the colony we introduced last year reproduced for the first time,\u201d said Wood. \u201cThese are great signs of success that this project will persist into the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
The rest of this land will benefit from the prairie dogs too.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou see increases in bird diversity, invertebrate diversity, even the bison like to feed in prairie dog towns,\u201d said Wood.<\/p>\n
Prairie dogs: a small creature with a comeback story much bigger than the animals themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany people come and they see the prairie dogs and it\u2019s just an instant connection and instant wow that\u2019s what nature can do,\u201d said Wood. \u201cThis place is Fort Worth\u2019s greatest natural gem and a prairie dog is just another way to get that message out that this is special to Fort Worth and North Texas.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TEXAS \u2014 At first glance, a sprawling field behind gates at the Fort Worth Nature Center & Refuge…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":981878,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5138],"tags":[5229,3425,359,5281,1596,159075,31126,7371,7372,251735,50,7202,358,41035,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,5284],"class_list":["post-981877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-america","tag-animals","tag-austin","tag-ctv","tag-dallas","tag-dfw-what-you-need-to-know","tag-el-paso","tag-fort-worth","tag-fortworth","tag-lauren-rangel","tag-news","tag-san-antonio","tag-texas","tag-texas-what-you-need-to-know","tag-tx","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-vod"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117041824093750151","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=981877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/981878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=981877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=981877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=981877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}