Private-public partnership aides CPW prairie dog, black-footed ferret conservation efforts

Threatening weather didn’t deter a team of six Colorado Parks and Wildlife biologists as they fanned out last week across 850 acres of Gary and Georgia Walker’s cattle ranch in Pueblo County to distribute plague vaccine hidden inside peanut butter pellets. Several of the biologists walked miles of transects across active prairie dog colonies where black-footed ferrets have been reintroduced, hand-tossing a pellet every eight yards, while a couple rode ATVs equipped with mechanical pellet shooters. Following precise routes, each biologist dropped about 50 pellets per acre across the colonies on the working cattle ranch that sprawls across U.S. Highway 50 west of Pueblo. The pellets resemble blueberries and are manufactured in a CPW lab in Fort Collins. The vaccine pellets are meant to be eaten by black-tailed prairie dogs and other small mammals that call the colonies home and will provide them with a resistance to the plague virus. After two days on the Walker Ranch, the team headed for Holly, in far eastern Colorado, to spread more vaccine across more sprawling prairie dog colonies. This is in addition to the other vaccine deployment locations across the state, all sharing the aim of protecting and preserving prairie dogs in Colorado...MORE

video - Wyoming Prairie Dogs Should Fear the Vacuum

By Glenn Woods

...On Tuesday’s morning show on KGAB radio [4/11/2017] a caller let me know of something called a Prairie Dog Vacuum. A what? Prairie Ecosystem Conservation Alliance (PECA) swears by it. The system was built by Gay Balfour of Cortez, CO, using a modified sewer-clearing truck to generate suction through a long hose. This amazing modified machine whisks the little furry rodents through the rubber hose at an amazing 60 mph. Environmentalists were outraged when they first heard of the prairie dog vacuum but while getting sucked into a waiting truck might shock and confuse the little varmints, it does not seem to harm them, and they can be relocated. The company charges $1000 a day and can clear about 20 acres in a day or about 800 holes...more

 Here is the company video:

 https://youtu.be/gAWokZuszuU

USFWS - Use drones to deliver medicine for prairie dogs

Drones might soon be dropping peanut butter-flavored treats laced with vaccine across some Montana prairie dog colonies under a plan to inoculate the rodents against the plague. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Tuesday it wants to protect prairie dogs from the disease because they're the primary food source for highly endangered black-footed ferrets. Plague can nearly wipe out prairie dog colonies, putting the ferrets at risk. The agency wants to scatter vaccine-laden bait on colonies at the Charles M. Russell and UL Bend national wildlife refuges in northeastern Montana. The plan has already been through safety and research phases...more

Barking prairie dogs: Why Denver court is entering rodent dispute

A court battle over a Utah prairie dog ruling that activists say could undermine the Endangered Species Act is set to come before a federal appeals court in Denver on Monday. U.S. Department of Justice lawyers want a federal appeals court to overturn the decision striking down protections for prairie dogs found primarily in and around the southern Utah town of Cedar City. The ruling came after residents in the town sued with help from lawyers from the Sacramento-based Pacific Legal Foundation. They said federal protections were allowing the small, burrowing animals to take over the town's golf course, airport and cemetery and even interrupt funerals with their barking. In a finding that lawyers say was the first of its kind, U.S. District Judge Dee Benson decided that the Commerce Clause doesn't allow the federal government to regulate animals found on private land in only one state. The federal government and animal rights groups contend that the ruling was a radical departure from previous court decisions, and it could weaken protections for animals all over the country because most animals listed as endangered species are only found in a single state...more

Four Corners ranchers and farmers troubled by influx of prairie dogs

Animal rights activists love prairie dogs. But typically, farmers and ranchers hate them. There's always a battle over what to do when there are too many. Trap and relocate or exterminate? In the Four Corners, there's a prairie dog invasion. “We need our wildlife around, but we do need to manage that.” And Hodiak Ewing spends a lot of time managing the wildlife. This season, it is prairie dogs he is focused on. “I would say five times as many,” he said, “There’s a lot a lot of prairie dogs.” He says the surge could be because most control methods have been banned, and that few people consider just moving the prairie dogs because of how much it costs. “The problem with relocation, unless you have private property that people want prairie dogs, we can’t relocate them to federal or state land or anything like that,” said Ewing. The prairie dogs are causing serious trouble for farmers and ranchers. Their mounds damage equipment, and horses and cows can step in holes and break their legs. “The biggest problem is the plague and human safety. They carry fleas that carry the plague that bite people it is fatal,” Ewing said...more

Feds defend Utah prairie dogs rules in closely watched case

Government attorneys are defending federal protections for Utah prairie dogs after 10 states stepped into the case in favor of a ruling that animal activists say could undermine the Endangered Species Act. U.S. Department of Justice lawyers want a federal appeals court to overturn the unusual decision striking down prairie dog protections near the southern Utah town of Cedar City, about 250 miles south of Salt Lake City. "The Supreme Court has consistently upheld Congress's authority to prevent interstate competition from causing various harms, including destruction of the natural environment," lawyers wrote in recently filed court documents. They're asking the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals to hear oral arguments in the case. It was originally filed by a group of Cedar City residents who said federal protections were allowing the small, burrowing animals to take over the town's golf course, airport and cemetery and even interrupt funerals with their barking. Attorney Michael Harris with Friends of Animals countered Thursday that those claims are overblown, and property rights can co-exist with animal protections. Jonathan Wood, a lawyer for the Pacific Legal Foundation, disagrees. He represented the Cedar City residents and argued that the U.S. Constitution's Commerce Clause doesn't allow the federal government to protect animals only found within a single state on private property. That reasoning hadn't gotten much traction in court before the ruling from U.S. District Judge Dee Benson last year. He struck down federal protections for Utah prairie dogs in a decision animal-rights groups called a radical departure from 40 years of animal protection under the Endangered Species Act. The ruling could have wide-ranging effects because most protected animals in the U.S. are only found in one state. If it's upheld on appeal, the case could bring the Endangered Species Act before the U.S. Supreme Court. Ten states have entered the case to support Benson's decision: Utah, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, South Dakota, Wyoming and now Michigan, which weighed in earlier this month. They say states should run protection programs for rare animals instead...more

In Recent Prairie Dog Case, the Federal Government Admits Something it Tries to Cover-Up

Little noticed in the recent court decision about the Utah prairie dog, which struck down for the first time the listing of a species under the Endangered Species Act, is the federal government admitted something that it and other proponents of the Act have long tried to conceal: the Act restricts and prevents otherwise normal and legal forms of land and resource use, such as agriculture and construction. The case, argued successfully by Jonathan Wood of the Pacific Legal Foundation, elicited some telling responses from the government. Proponents of the Endangered Species Act have long claimed that the Act does not restrict or prevent normal and legal land and resource use, in an effort to shield the Act from legal challenge that it violates the Constitution’s Taking’s Clause, which states “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” Despite this plain language, and that landowners, such as those in southern Utah with prairie dogs on their land, have had significant portions of their property converted into de facto federal wildlife refuges for endangered species, proponents of the Endangered Species Act maintain otherwise. While the Utah prairie dog case disproves the patently false claim that the Endangered Species Act does not restrict land and resource use, the government ironically put itself in the position of having to admit this. The crux of the government’s case is that federal protection of the prairie dog is legally justified because the rodent is involved in interstate commerce. According to this line of thought, this triggers protection under the Act because the Commerce Clause of the Constitution gives Congress the power “to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.” Over the years, and especially since the New Deal era, the scope of the Commerce Clause has been expanded so massively that the federal government feels it can regulate just about anything, however tenuous or even nonexistent its links to interstate commerce. The problem with the government’s Commerce Clause claim in the case of the Utah prairie dog is that the rodent lives entirely within Utah and is not involved in, or has any effect on, interstate commerce. Yet because the federal government put itself in the untenable position that protection of the prairie dog under the Endangered Species Act is legally justified due to the Commerce Clause, the feds had to admit the Act prevented otherwise normal and legal forms of land use in order to try to create a “nexus,” or link, to interstate commerce...more

Editorial - Prairie dog process has been a dog

...Prairie dogs and humans seek the same fertile places. While roughly a quarter of Utah is private land, that private land has more than half the known prairie dogs. For the farmers and ranchers who form much of the political force in rural Utah, the idea that there aren’t enough dogs is preposterous. They’re often breaking their irrigation equipment on prairie dog mounds. The feds, however, don’t really count the dogs on private land, even as they insist those dogs must be protected. They know they exist, but their job under the ESA is to make sure the species can go on forever. And that means they focus on the dogs living on land that is dedicated to their protection, something most private landowners are not willing to do. In fact, if the prairie dog lost its protection, it can be argued the farmers would return to the kind of eradication efforts that dropped their populations in the first place. But it isn’t even clear how many dogs there were to begin with. The Utah prairie dog was among the first animals to be listed as "endangered" when the ESA passed in 1973, but within 10 years that listing had been downgraded to "threatened." Is that because the population rebounded because of federal protection? Actually, the feds acknowledge it’s more likely that the ESA’s directive to find all the prairie dogs led to a lot more animals being discovered. So all this feeds the anti-federal flames. Wayne County commissioners tell the state not to sell land to the Nature Conservancy to preserve prairie dogs. Rep. Chris Stewart introduces a bill to force Fish and Wildlife to include dogs on private land (even if there is no habitat protection for those dogs), and the feds are sued by a group of Cedar City landowners calling themselves the People for the Ethical Treatment of Property Owners. Fish and Wildlife biologists are in a tough spot. They believe the dog is on its way to removal from the threatened list, but the law requires a five-year period to see if the populations really are sustaining. That clock hasn’t even started yet because they’re still trying to secure more habitat. In the meantime, the political and legal fights go on...more

Conservationists say prairie dog proposal could hamper endangered species reintroduction

Conservation groups are criticizing a proposal to reduce the amount of land protected for prairie dogs in the Thunder Basin National Grassland. The U.S. Forest Service is considering shrinking the acreage of protected land, largely because ranchers have concerns about livestock being injured in prairie dog holes and acquiring diseases. But Steve Forrest with Defenders of Wildlife says reducing the prairie dog population could create problems for other wildlife. For example, he says it would hamper efforts to re-introduce endangered species like black-footed ferrets, because the ferrets almost exclusively eat prairie dogs...more