Over the past century the grasslands of northern Mexico have been taken over by shrubby mesquite and turned to desert. Ecologist Gerardo Ceballos is on a mission to turn them back. Can he restore an entire prairie ecosystem? Ceballos hopes he can, with the help of an unlikely ally. Ari Daniel Shapiro reports from Chihuahua. Podcast transcript Image Credit: Arthur Chapman, Flickr: EOL Images. CC BY-NC-SA read moreDuration: 5:28Published: Wed, 09 Jan 2013 15:17:45 +0000
Richardson's Ground Squirrel (Urocitellus richardsonii) near Lake Chaplin Saskatchewan, Canada. Photographed on 30 July 2009.www.inaturalist.org/observations/53418631
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
2009-04-03 Lower Austria, district Mdling - Perchtoldsdorfer Heide (310 msm Quadrant 7863/4).German name: Europischer ZieselRelatively rare but with stable colonies on many places in Eastern Austria, like here on Perchtoldsdorf heath. This species was much more common some decades ago, when there existed many more dry heaths and meadows in the lowlands - much of them now have been converted to ploughland, or else have been afforested.In early spring, males are the first ones to appear (to put on fat, it seems, as later on they're busy both courting and defending their females, and feeding their young: for that see remarks here) - so in all likelihood those you can see here (and in the other photos linked below) are males.