WildEarth Guardians

Thursday, March 11, 2004
Coalition Secures Court Victory for the White-Tailed Prairie Dog

Fish and Wildlife Service Must Respond to Endangered Species Act Petition
Contact: WildEarth Guardians

Denver, CO - The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service must respond by October 31st to a citizen petition to protect the white-tailed prairie dog, according to a new court settlement announced today. The petition seeks Endangered Species Act protection for the white-tailed prairie dog, a species that has vanished from at least 92% of its historical habitat. White-tailed prairie dogs inhabit the "Sagebrush Sea" of central and western Wyoming, northwestern Colorado, northeastern Utah, and south-central Montana, and are critical to the health of the sagebrush ecosystem. Endangered black-footed ferrets depend on prairie dogs for food and on their burrows for shelter. Prairie dogs also provide food for badgers, ferruginous hawks, and golden eagles as well as crucial habitat for many other native plants and animals.

"Prairie dogs are absolutely essential to maintaining a healthy balance in nature that supports many species of native wildlife," said Gene Byrne, a retired Colorado Division of Wildlife biologist who is not a party to the lawsuit. "Some species such as black footed ferrets cannot survive without prairie dogs. Prairie dogs supply nearly 100% of the ferrets' food and shelter." Byrne headed the state's first black-footed ferret reintroduction in 2001. Ferrets were released in the Wolf Creek and Coyote Basin white-tailed prairie dog complexes near Rangely, Colorado.

Sylvatic plague, a disease accidentally introduced to North America around 1900, has caused large-scale prairie dog population declines. Oil and gas drilling, suburban sprawl, and conversion of land to agriculture have also devastated prairie dog habitat. Most white-tailed prairie dogs live in small, isolated colonies that are easily wiped out by plague outbreaks, poisoning, or target shooting of live prairie dogs.

Since the Endangered Species Act listing petition was filed, some state agencies have taken modest but important conservation steps. For instance, Utah has adopted seasonal shooting restrictions on white-tailed prairie dogs on public lands in the state, Montana banned shooting on federal lands, and both the Rocky Mountain Region of the Forest Service and the state of Utah added the white-tailed to their Sensitive Species lists. Despite these measures, however, widespread use of prairie dogs as live targets and poisoning continue in Colorado and Wyoming, and habitat loss to oil and gas development and other land uses continues to accelerate rangewide.

"If Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming want to recover the white-tailed prairie dog and avoid Endangered Species Act protection, they must end target shooting of live prairie dogs, ban poisoning, and protect important prairie dog habitat," explained Erin Robertson, Staff Biologist for Center for Native Ecosystems.

Endangered Species Act protection would require the federal government to develop a long-term recovery plan for the species and its habitat. Based on the extensive research underlying the listing petition, the coalition has offered concrete management recommendations that would help recover the white-tailed prairie dog and avoid Endangered Species Act listing. They are described in a report published last year entitled "Recovering the White-Tailed Prairie Dog and its Habitat: Management Needs." The coalition has also called on the Bureau of Land Management to designate 25 key prairie dog complexes as Areas of Critical Environmental Concern. Both documents are available at www.nativeecosystems.org/prairiedogs/whitetailed/

The preliminary finding in October will be more than two years late. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service routinely cites an inadequate budget and heavy workload as justification for listing delays, but this is a crisis of its own making. The Service estimates it needs $153 million to address the backlog of candidate species, yet the Bush Administration insists on asking Congress for only a fraction of that amount ($12.3 million for FY2004). In February 2003 Congress appropriated the full amount requested and then invited the Department of Interior (which contains the FWS) to submit a supplemental budget request to better fund the FWS listing budget. Interior Secretary Norton refused that invitation. Incredibly, just twelve weeks later the Department of Interior sent a letter to the courts, claiming a lack of funding for the listing budget, and asking to be relieved from having to follow court orders.

"Secretary of Interior Gale Norton and the Bush Administration are trying to starve the endangered species listing program," explained Nicole Rosmarino, Endangered Species Director for WildEarth Guardians. "Unless this situation is reversed, many species may very well go extinct while waiting in line for review."

"The Service always complains about how citizen lawsuits are keeping them from doing their job," noted Jay Tutchton, Director of the Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Denver College of Law. "In fact, the situation is just the opposite. Citizen petitions and lawsuits are the only things that force the Service to step outside of its bureaucratic bunker and act."

The coalition, led by Center for Native Ecosystems (Denver), also includes Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (Salt Lake City), American Lands Alliance (Washington, DC), Biodiversity Conservation Alliance (Laramie), WildEarth Guardians (Santa Fe), the Ecology Center (Missoula), Sinapu (Boulder), and the naturalist and author Terry Tempest Williams (Castle Valley, UT). Attorneys Jay Tutchton and Jack Tuholske represented the coalition.

For more information about the white-tailed prairie dog, including downloadable photographs, visit www.nativeecosystems.org/prairiedogs/whitetailed/

Contacts: Gene Byrne, retired Colorado Division of Wildlife Biologist, (970) 464-9177 Erin Robertson, Staff Biologist, Center for Native Ecosystems, (303) 546-0214 Jay Tutchton, Staff Attorney, Univ. of Denver Environmental Law Clinic, (303) 871-6034 Dr. Nicole Rosmarino, WildEarth Guardians, 505-988-9126 x156