Oh, Give Me a Home Where Prairie Dogs Roam -- in Boulder Colorado County Builds Fence
To Keep Pesky Rodents From Going to Broomfield

By KRIS HUDSON

May 20, 2006; WALL STREET JOURNAL Page A1

BOULDER, Colo. -- Many people in the West view prairie dogs as disease-carrying, pasture-damaging pests that they would be happy to see go the way of the bison. Yet Boulder County just built a half-mile barrier to keep the burrowing varmints from leaving.
The chicken-wire fence blocks black-tailed prairie dogs from venturing into neighboring Broomfield County, where the 15-inch-long rodents face extermination as a health concern if they wander close to homes.
Boulder County has bent over backward to make itself a prairie-dog haven. The animals have dug up everything from prime development parcels to Little League fields here, yet local politics and city ordinances make exterminating them next to impossible. Animal activists have picketed extermination sites, and Boulder herbal tea-maker Celestial Seasonings several years ago endured public scorn after it poisoned prairie dogs that dug up the grounds of its headquarters.
The question of how to manage prairie dogs is a divisive one in the West and Great Plains. In the past decade, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has denied petitions by wildlife groups to put three species, including the black-tailed prairie dogs common in Boulder, on the threatened list. A fourth species, the Utah prairie dog, is currently listed as threatened, but it has so stymied development in fast-growing areas of Utah that state and federal regulators are considering allowing more construction on the critter's habitat as long as it is offset with preservation elsewhere.
In South Dakota's 2004 Senate race between former Democratic Majority Leader Tom Daschle and Republican John Thune, who won the election, the candidates attempted to one-up each other in their disdain for prairie dogs, the bane of the state's ranchers.
"If we had the right to control them, they wouldn't be a problem," said Myron Williams, a rancher who grazes cattle on federal land near South Dakota's Badlands. "But when there are certain entities that think they ought to be protected for no reason other than they think they're cute, then we have a problem."
Boulder has long marched to a different drummer. Democrat John Kerry lost Colorado by a sizable margin in the 2004 presidential election, but he carried Boulder County, home of the University of Colorado, by a 2-to-1 margin. Boulder's City Council has taken stances in recent years opposing the war in Iraq and supporting the liberation of Tibet from Chinese rule. Elsewhere in Colorado, people refer to it as "The People's Republic of Boulder."
Boulder has a particular soft spot for animals. The city council in 2001 sought to encourage treatment of pets as family members by recasting pet owners in its animal codes as "pet guardians." In the same year, the city banned circus acts involving animals out of concern for their treatment.
The movement to protect prairie dogs in Boulder County dates back decades but heated up as the county's population surged with the tech boom in the 1990s. Activists in 1998 protested the extermination of 1,500 prairie dogs in the Boulder County town of Lafayette by picketing the mayor's house. That same year, protesters picketed a construction site in nearby Louisville to decry the extermination of 150 prairie dogs. Someone topped off the demonstration by spray painting "killer" on the developer's roadside sign.
After Celestial Seasonings ran afoul of the prairie dog lobby in 1999, the company committed itself to preserving the prairie-dog colonies on its grounds. But last year, Celestial, now part of Hain Celestial Group Inc., heard complaints from neighbors about the critters tearing up their backyards. To compensate, Celestial promised to build a barrier to block the prairie dogs from the yards.
The issue has vexed schools and youth leagues, too. Pickets appeared at a Lafayette elementary school in 2002 to oppose the Boulder Valley School District's plan to exterminate nearby prairie-dog colonies. This year, the district is grappling with how to diplomatically remove prairie dogs from the grounds of three schools, including one where fire-drill evacuations force children into a field peppered with prairie dog burrows and droppings. The North Boulder Little League this year was forced to abandon five baseball fields undermined by prairie dogs. The league now rents fields from various schools.
"It's been difficult, but we've been able to accommodate it for a so-called rat," commented Marlyn Bohn, a league board member.
In 2000, the city of Boulder banned prairie-dog exterminations. But the Colorado Division of Wildlife later argued that the law encroached on its authority. The city responded last year with new guidelines that allow exterminations only after a lengthy review and with the city manager's approval. So far, only one landowner, a church preparing for expansion, has killed prairie dogs under the new guidelines.
Prairie-dog supporters find that unsatisfactory. "Killing wildlife because we cannot come up with the solution we want right now is not something I want to pass along to my children," said Lindsey Sterling Krank, director of the Boulder-based Prairie Dog Coalition, a network of 34 environmental and animal-management groups.
Containing prairie dogs is like corralling water. Young males ousted from their colonies will scamper for a mile or more to find a new home. And prairie dogs are quite adept at digging under, scurrying around or climbing over any obstacle in their way. Boulder County has erected several fences in recent years to block prairie dogs from encroaching on human areas, but they have never succeeded.
Right now, the hottest battleground is the border separating Boulder and Broomfield counties. On the Boulder County side is a prairie preserve teeming with prairie dogs. On the other side, burgeoning, five-year-old Broomfield County has houses right up to the county line.
When Boulder County prairie dogs wander next to Broomfield houses, Broomfield County's codes require its wildlife officers to relocate them or exterminate them. Since Broomfield's sites for prairie-dog relocation already are full and the process required to move them to other counties is onerous, wayward dogs face a death sentence.
Mark Brennan, a Boulder County wildlife official, is leading the effort to keep prairie dogs from crossing the county line. In 2003, he attached a 600-foot tarpaulin barrier to a section of barbed-wire fence nearest the homes. A year later, he added another 300 feet of tarp after the prairie-dog colonies expanded. The tarps stopped many prairie dogs, but determined ones could still chew through it or waddle around it.
So, last year, Mr. Brennan made a better prairie dog trap. His crew began attaching chicken wire to the existing barbed-wire fence. The chicken wire extends for 12 inches along the ground, to keep the rodents from burrowing. And Mr. Brennan purposely left the top few inches of chicken wire unsecured. That way, any prairie dog attempting to climb over the chicken wire will, theoretically, get flopped back onto the Boulder County side by the wobbly top.
"You go through all that graduate-school training," said Mr. Brennan as he stood next to the fence, prairie dogs chirping angrily at him. "And you're trying to outthink an animal with a brain the size of your thumb."
Write to Kris Hudson at kris.hudson@wsj.com

"said Lindsey Sterling Krank, director of the Boulder-based Prairie Dog Coalition,"

Freaks, Geeks and Weirdos and the name fits.

A few years back while these folks where catching PD's and relocating them a couple of their members came down with the plague you would have thought they'd have learned something.

Nah, the Peoples' Republic of Boulder won't try and learn anything. You have to realize that the university (note small "u") a while back had the largest number of card-carrying communist professors! At conferences I have to attend up there, I wear my NRA cap, VHA life membership patch, etc, etc. Of course it doesn't make me welcome, but what the heck.

Lets Not forget the University of Colorado is also home to Ward Churchhill...

This proves that smoking dope and using drugs does contribute to liberal Disneyland Utopia in people's minds...

But this does give me a " day dream"....

Imagine, being able to go out and pop prairie dogs and have a bunch of PETA " Save the World" Fruit Cakes protesting, so you know each time they are watching you explode one of the little rodents, that you have a bunch of PETA followers behind you just freaking out.... brings a smile to one's face and a fulfillment in one's heart...

And who said a 300 Win Mag wouldn't make a good prairie dog gun??? YOU just have to know your audience is all...

oh the possibilities....

seafire

quote:

Originally posted by seafire/B17G:
But this does give me a " day dream"....

Imagine, being able to go out and pop prairie dogs and have a bunch of PETA " Save the World" Fruit Cakes protesting, so you know each time they are watching you explode one of the little rodents, that you have a bunch of PETA followers behind you just freaking out.... brings a smile to one's face and a fulfillment in one's heart...

oh the possibilities....

seafire

seafire I'd love just love to give them an Air Show with my 6MM/284.