WildEarth Guardians

Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Interior Secretary Continues to Oppose Prairie Dog Protection

Salazar Appeals Court Loss Over Gunnison's Prairie Dog
Contact: Nicole Rosmarino 505 699-7404

Phoenix, AZ – Nov. 23. Last Friday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar appealed a court loss over Endangered Species Act (ESA) protection for the Gunnison’s prairie dog. In a lawsuit brought by WildEarth Guardians, a federal court in Arizona had decided on September 30 that the Interior Secretary violated the law when he found that only those Gunnison’s prairie dogs located in montane habitat warranted ESA listing and those in lower-elevation prairie habitat did not. The government lost on the same legal point in Montana on August 5, over the delisting of gray wolves in all Northern Rockies states except Wyoming.

Prairie dogs and wolves are among the most persecuted wildlife species in North America by the ranching industry.

“First wolves, then prairie dogs, it’s clear that Mr. Salazar takes his cowboy hat seriously: he is making decisions based on rancher prejudice against wildlife rather than on science and the law,” stated Dr. Nicole Rosmarino of WildEarth Guardians. “We think it’s irresponsible of Secretary Salazar to fight legal protections for these endangered animals rather than live up to his duty to fight the extinction crisis by upholding the Endangered Species Act.”

The law specifies that a full species, subspecies, or distinct population of vertebrate wildlife can be listed, and species facing a threat in a “significant portion of range” are listed throughout their full range. But with controversial wildlife species, such as rodents and wolves, Mr. Salazar has invented new ways of dodging political bullets: protections for the Northern Rockies gray wolf and Preble’s meadow jumping mouse were drawn along state, not biological lines, contrary to the ESA. The meadow jumping mouse was delisted in Wyoming, but not Colorado. For the Gunnison’s prairie dog, Mr. Salazar created a new category, outside the ESA, by recognizing montane populations as a significant portion of the species’ range but only recommending their protection within that subset of their full range.

In his decision striking down the Service’s 2008 finding on the Gunnison’s prairie dog, U.S. District Court Judge Frederick J. Martone wrote, “The defendant contends that the ESA gives him the flexibility to provide different levels of protection to the same species.  We agree.  The ESA permits the defendant to treat subspecies and distinct population segments of a species differently by designating them as separate species.  While there may be ways to treat prairie dogs in the prairie differently than prairie dogs in the mountains under the statute, altering Congress’s definition of endangered and threatened species is not one of them.”

Judge Martone’s decision notes the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s documentation of a 98 percent decline in the area occupied by Gunnison’s prairie dogs, from 24 million acres in 1916 to 500,000 or fewer acres in 2008. Guardians’ petition chronicled an onslaught of threats explaining this decline, including mass extermination efforts orchestrated on behalf of the livestock industry; sylvatic plague, an exotic disease to which prairie dogs have little or no immunity; rampant oil and gas drilling; shooting; poisoning; urban sprawl; and other perils.

“The Gunnison’s prairie dog is by all accounts imperiled. It has already waited six years for federal protection. Secretary Salazar seems intent on inventing new strategies not to fight extinction, but to guarantee it,” Rosmarino continued.

WildEarth Guardians is a west-wide conservation group dedicated to protecting and restoring wildlife, wild rivers, and wild places. The group leads a coalition of over 100 scientists and conservation groups calling for Ken Salazar’s resignation as Interior Secretary.

For more information email nrosmarino@wildearthguardians.org or call 505-699-7404.