Many Wichita Falls residents are upset by how the city addressed prairie dog overpopulation and a new enclosure at Kiwanis Park.

A prairie dog enclosure built at the park decades ago was due for replacement by the parks department.

As the city prepares the area for the animals' new habitat, some visitors have been shocked by the city's construction process and the effect it may be having on prairie dogs.

The old enclosure, built in the 1960s or 70s, consisted of a metal mesh fencing partially buried in the ground. As the fencing deteriorated, more and more animals have escaped the enclosure.

Prairie dogs now are reaching all areas of the park, which is causing concern.

A city release sent Monday said the park has experienced significant overpopulation and their rapid spread is causing health and safety concerns.

“They are nearing private property, cemeteries, sports fields and could ultimately leave the park at Southwest Parkway causing traffic hazards,” the release states.

The parks department is in the process of constructing a 70,000-square-foot exhibit with concrete walls buried five feet into the ground.

“This containment area is approximately twice the size of the older containment area. Staff will be installing water sprinklers, landscape, and stones in the new habitat area to help generate food and provide other natural resources for the animals,” the release states.

The city said they plan to catch and relocate "as many of the animals as possible" to place them in the new containment area.

Still, there will be more animals than the new exhibit can hold. The city said they looked for other areas to relocate the animals, but many nearby prairie dog exhibits are also full.

The release admits the city will not be able to keep or relocate all the prairie dogs and they may have to resort to “humane methods of euthanasia to correct the problem.”

Parks Director Terry Points said this new prairie dog enclosure is a project they have been planning for years.

“Every year we get money from the Kiwanis Club to enhance the park. We have enough money now build a new exhibit,” he said.

There are hundreds of prairie dogs in the park now encompassing about 30 acres of land.

Points said they are getting calls from houses near the park saying the critters are getting in their yards. They are almost into the baseball fields and inching closer to the Lakeview Cemetery.

Points has cared for the prairie dogs professionally for more than 25 years. When planning the habitat change, he said he researched similar projects on the internet. He also spoke to maintainers of habitats at Lake Arrowhead, in Lawton and Lubbock.

“Harming the little fur babies is the last thing I want to do. I went there as a kid, I take by grandkids out there,” he said.

Points said the animals burrow several feet below ground and can easily burrow back up out of the ground. He does not believe the machinery going over the area would have harmed any of the rodents. 

"Some burrow openings have been covered, but these burrows are very deep and the prairie dogs, when threatened will go down under for protection," Points said in an email to fellow city staff to inform them about the situation.

"After it is quiet they dig their way back to the top. We have not set out to harm, kill or bury them alive. We are very close to finishing the project and it will be a very nice exhibit." 

Rather than flattening the ground, Points said his crews have brought in loads of dirt to shape new berms for the critters.

“This is what I do and I do my level best to make this a better place to live,” he said.

Due to the negative attention to the project, Points said they pulled out work crews Monday, but planned to get back to work at Kiwanis Tuesday. He expects they have about another week of work on the site.

Euthanizing the animals is something Points said he was “totally against” at first, but reluctantly agreed to as a last resort to get the situation under control.

Points also cleared his plan with Tyler Reed, Texas Parks and Wildlife Game Warden for our area.

“We’re trying to create place were public can enjoy them. (The things that have been said,) that is not what I’m about. That hits me the wrong way, a bad way. I love my job and if I didn’t, I’d work somewhere else. I started out with weed eater and now I’m here and I love what I do,” Points said.  

Attempting to "control" a prairie dog community is a tricky business. Lake Arrowhead said they go the opposite way and invite people to watch the animals in the wild. 

Lake Arrowhead Parks Superintendent Keith Gauthier said they have 250 to 300 prairie dogs at the park.

They do not have an enclosure and want their animals to remain wild so people can see them in their natural habitat.

“They burrow where they like, there are some in the swim area, some camp sites,” he said.

The park does not control the animals, other than occasionally trapping one that wanders too far away and taking it back to the main habitat.

Gauthier said their prairie dog population has expanded somewhat, but is controlled by natural predators like the black-footed ferret (although they are rare), hawks or snakes.

“Keep wild life wild, that’s what we like to say. Let mother nature take care of itself,” he said.

Gauthier said without natural predators, prairie dogs can reproduce extremely rapidly. A male will mate with 4 to 6 females each mating season, which is in March. Each female will produce on average 3 to 4 pups.

The owner of a local reptile rescue, Mike Comella, witnessed the construction process at the park last week and shot a video of himself confronting a city of Wichita Falls employee.

Comella said he went out to feed the prairie dogs, as he has for years, and saw what he felt was massive destruction to the area where the previous habitat stood.

“After telling media and the public that they were ‘improving’ the enclosure for the prairie dogs in Kiwanis Park in Wichita Falls, Texas, the city parks and recreation department began rolling machinery over the dens to collapse them and bury the animals alive in their homes,” he states in a post and video dated March 2. The video has had more than 55,000 views and 1,005 shares as of Monday afternoon.

Another rescue group, Kemp Wildlife Rehabilitation and Rescue saw the first video and went to see the construction site for themselves Friday.

“While I understand the need to expand the area, what I do not understand is why the machines destroyed the existing prairie dogs in the process," KWRR said on a Facebook post dated March 3.

"The soil was wet and heavy machinery was used to cause the entire enclosed area to be compacted down. There is no doubt in my mind that this resulted in the deaths by suffocation of the animals that ran into their burrows to hide from the machines."

KWRR Director Mary Kemp said Monday she went to look at the area and was shocked by perceived leveling. With the heavy clay soil and recent rains, Kemp said there was sure to be many prairie dogs that got killed in collapsed tunnels when the machinery came through.

Both rescue groups asked the public to contact the parks department and said they will continue efforts to help the remaining prairie dogs.

Dr. Gina Seaburg a professional consultant on prairie dog care, based in Lawton, learned about the situation in Wichita Falls through Comella's video and was later contacted by Kemp.

She said years ago, she had preliminary discussions with the city about the prairie dog problem, but had not spoken with anyone from the city since that time.

“It is unfortunate that we are where we are,” she said.

Seaburg said she and her business partner Linda Watson, based in Lubbock, would have been happy to help with the relocation effort at Kiwanis if they had been contacted. She said they would still be willing to help salvage the remaining animals and invited the city to contact her.

She said this is the absolute worst time of year for this to happen because it is mating season and many pregnant mothers and their pups are underground and unlikely to move.

An enclosed prairie dog habitat is possible, she said, and noted Lubbock’s Prairie Dog Town. The nature of the species, she said, is that they are always exploring weakness in their enclosure. Generally, in a well-maintained habitat, the animals stay within the perimeter, but some could get out at times.

“It’s a difficult question for the city on how to propose this. Sometimes they don’t understand their (prairie dogs) importance to the ecosystem. It is what makes Texas great, we should relish what is native,” she said.

The new prairie dog enclosure is expected to be completed in a a week or two. The park may be closed on several occasions during construction and the entrance to the park will be blocked with construction equipment on closed days.