WildEarth Guardians

Wednesday, February 8, 2006
Gunnison's prairie dog not endangered, for now, feds say

Prairie dogs are a 'keystone' species - As many as 150 other critters depend on it, such as for food for hawks, bobcats and coyotes
Contact: James W. Brosnan Scripps Howard News Service

Washington - Albuquerque sprawl, roadkill, decades of poisoning, plague-carrying fleas, gas wells and varmint hunters aren't enough to put Gunnison's prairie dog on the Endangered Species List.

So ruled the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, at least for now.

In a notice filed Monday in the Federal Register, the agency rejected a petition from the WildEarth Guardians and 73 other groups and individuals that would have triggered the process leading to legal protections for Gunnison's prairie dog, a species that ranges over the Four Corners area of New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and Utah, including Albuquerque and Santa Fe.

"I'm disappointed," said Lynn Diehl, outreach coordinator for Prairie Dog Pals in Albuquerque. "It would have just protected them, made it illegal to knowingly poison them or shoot them."

The city of Albuquerque, which once poisoned prairie dogs, spent $14,000 last year to help Prairie Dog Pals remove about 500 prairie dogs to city-owned open space on the West Mesa. Private developers paid the group to move another 500.

At Kirtland Air Force Base, prairie dog burrows are fumigated in a "no-tolerance zone" if trapping and removal doesn't work. The zone covers about 1 percent of Kirtland's 52,000 acres, near the runway and other areas where burrows pose a threat, said Deb Mercurio, director of public affairs for the base.

Santa Fe has an ordinance requiring developers to trap and remove prairie dogs.

Listing Gunnison's prairie dog as an endangered species could have forced other cities to follow suit, said Con Slobodchikoff, a Northern Arizona University professor of biology who helped the WildEarth Guardians petition.

Gunnison's prairie dog averages between 12 and 15 inches in length and is one of five prairie dog species in North America. Gunnison's is distinguished from the black-tailed prairie dog, which also ranges in New Mexico, by its shorter and lighter-colored tail.

Prairie dog advocates say Gunnison's is a "keystone" species, one that as many as 150 other critters may depend on, such as food for hawks, bobcats and coyotes. They're also home builders for one species of owl that nests in abandoned burrows.

Slobodchikoff said prairie dogs have the most highly developed language of any animal species yet discovered, with messages that can distinguish between a hawk, human or coyote and even describe the threat by color and shape.

Biologists estimate that 90 years ago, Gunnison's prairie dog colonies occupied more than 24 million acres in the Four Corners states, but widespread poisoning wiped out 95 percent of the species by 1961, reducing their total habitat to about 1 million acres.

Petitioners told the Fish and Wildlife Service that threats now include loss of habitat and "road mortality" from developments in Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Taos and Flagstaff.

Because Gunnison's prairie dog requires soft soils for burrows and prefers higher altitudes, they tend to live in areas "somewhat similar to where people colonize," said Slobodchikoff.

Municipal development does hurt the species but not enough to prove it's in decline, said Eric Hein, Albuquerque branch chief in the Ecological Services Division of the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Hein said information about what's happening to Gunnison's prairie dog is "sketchy," in part because none of the 29 tribes and pueblos the service contacted provided any information on what's happening to the prairie dog on tribal lands.

The Four Corners states are in the midst of a conservation planning effort that could yield more information about the species this fall, Hein said. Then the service could review its decision next year, he said.

The service also cited a study that says prairie dog colonies can recover from a shooting spree.

That's true, said Janet Hansen, chief executive officer of the South Dakota-based Varmint Hunters Association.

"It's physically impossible to shoot them all," said Hansen. "If one animal hears something, they sound the alarm and they all disappear."

She said her association supports skilled hunting of prairie dogs using small-caliber weapons as an alternative to poisoning. The group's Web site offers a magazine, the "NRA Varmint Hunter Game" and an instructional video, "Prairie Dog Be Gone," produced by Velocity Films.

Slobodchikoff said the biggest threat to Gunnison's prairie dog is a plague carried by fleas, which probably carried the disease from Asia to the United States on ships.

Copyright 2005 Albuquerque Tribune - Reprinted with permission