Shrubby Dogtown

A prairie dog town with greasewood and sagebrush within a mixed-grass grassland at Grass Lake National Wildlife Refuge provides a unique habitat niche for species that require these more open and short grasslands, such as burrowing owls, thick-billed longspurs, and mountain plovers. In this regard, prairie dogs act as grassland ecosystem engineers, just as beavers do when creating wetlands. Photo by Cortez Rohr/USFWS.