Visitors won’t be able to get their cute prairie dog fix for a while in the West Bloc of Grasslands National Park.
“In the beginning of July, the park found a dead prairie dog and sent it for testing,” explained Adrianna Bekeski from Parks Canada. The park closed the Broken Hills prairie dog colony in the West Bloc to visitors as of July 19 when tests came back positive confirming sylvatic plague in the dead Black-tailed prairie dog and two ground squirrels found nearby.
“We were 95 per cent sure it had sylvatic plague because it’s been in that area before. It is on the landscape,” Bekeski noted.
Grasslands National Park has had a plague mitigation plan since its last case in 2010. As a precautionary measure, Parks Canada is advising the public to avoid the colony, providing visitors with information and clearly marking off the area. The colony is very remote and is at least a couple of kilometres from main hiking trails. Access to the Broken Hills colony and others nearby have been closed. Meanwhile, other prairie dog colonies in the park are still accessible to the public.
