Newsday.com - Ranchers Complain About Prairie Dogs

"Dammit, we're paying two and a half cents an acre to use this grazing land, and we want some service! Now, kill off this endangered species!"

Jay Davis of the Sierra Club said 98 percent of the prairie dogs present when explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark traveled across the country are gone.

Actually, they're all gone; prairie dogs only live a few years and that was 200 years ago. What he means to say is that the current population is roughly two percent of the size of the early 18th century population. It just so happens that the population is centered in South Dakota and they're very common there.