The Utah prairie dog lives nowhere else on Earth, and Utah’s 531 records trace that entire world range: a compact block of high valleys and plateaus in the state’s southwest. Garfield County alone holds 328, Iron County adds 126, and Kane and Wayne counties carry most of the rest, a footprint barely a hundred miles across.
A colonial digger of high grassland
Prairie dogs are ground squirrels that live in town networks of burrows, cropping the grass around their mounds short so no predator can approach unseen. The Utah species is the smallest of the prairie dogs, tied to cool, high-elevation grasslands on the plateaus of the state’s southwest. Records gather at Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Bryce Canyon National Park, and the state trust lands of the Johns Valley and Parker Mountain blocks, with Dixie National Forest and the Markagunt Plateau marking the southern end of the range.
Long sleep, short season
Reports run from March into fall, crest in May when the year’s pups first emerge from the natal burrow, and drop to almost nothing from November through February. Utah prairie dogs hibernate through the long plateau winter, spending only about half the year above ground to breed, raise young, and build the fat that carries a colony through to spring.
Status in Utah
NatureServe ranks the Utah prairie dog S2, Imperiled, in Utah, with a matching G2 rank globally, and the IUCN lists the species as Endangered. It is federally listed as threatened, and its entire population fits inside one small corner of its one native state.
Full species profile
