adopt-a-colony

Harvest Junction Colony

The Harvest Junction Colony is a moderately-sized group of prairie dogs (60-75 animals) living in a suburban plot near the southeast edge of Longmont, Colorado. The colony was recently slated for extermination, but local residents nearby have organized to help preserve the colony and set aside a small protected habitat* where it can thrive in peace alongside residential homes, apartments, retail parks, and a rec center nearby. The colony straddles a boundary of both neighborhood and city-owned lands, making management complicated, but residents have begun to coordinate with the City of Longmont toward local preservation. Lefthand Creek flows immediately adjacent to the colony. A beaver pond there has created a beautiful marshland where great blue herons, egrets, nesting ducks, predatory birds, and other wildlife are thriving. Residents are organizing to convince their fellow neighbors and the city that habitat conservation is better than policies of extermination and sterilization, and that people can live in harmony next to local wildlife without conflict. The neighborhood is raising funds to construct a barrier fence to minimize prairie dog traffic fatalities from an adjacent road as well as to limit the colony from a nearby park. The previously-bulldozed land is being remedied and worked to remove invasive flora and restore a more natural shortgrass prairie habitat. Funds for this project will go toward construction, maintenance, and habitat restoration to allow the colony to live conflict-free next to civilization, while restoring a small piece of once-widespread Colorado grasslands for future generations.