Wildlife commission pushes toward protecting prairie dogs on public land

FORT MORGAN — New rules to protect prairie dogs on public land are moving toward finalization after the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission voted to advance a petition seeking to ban recreational shooting of the controversial species.

The decision sends the proposal to final rulemaking and a last vote in January.

The 11-member commission voted 6 to 5 at its Nov. 5 meeting in Fort Morgan, split along ideological lines that have been solidifying since three commissioners appointed by Gov. Jared Polis were seated in June. 

Supporters on the commission rallied around the idea that shooting prairie dogs for fun is barbaric and serves no known conservation purpose. The opponents objected largely on the premise that Commission Chair Jay Tutchton and others were pushing the petition through the rulemaking process without enough input from groups impacted by prairie dogs and those who support shooting them for fun. 

In the rulemaking process, interested persons or agencies write proposed rules, then submit them to the commission for approval before they can take effect. Commissioners initiated rulemaking on the prairie dog petition in September with a vote to accept the petition and give it to CPW staff for review and recommendations. 

The Prairie Dog Coalition, which advocates for the protection of the breadloaf-size animals, submitted its petition in April, citing concerns over the mass shooting of the animals. 

Defenders of Wildlife, an animal welfare group based in Washington, D.C. that supported the petition says it was concerned about scavengers getting lead poisoning from feeding on their bullet-ridden carcasses and pointed out that Colorado Parks and Wildlife has designated prairie dogs a species of greatest conservation need in its latest State Wildlife Action Plan, approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in January. 

Chamois Anderson, senior representative of the Rockies and Plains program for Defenders of Wildlife, said the petition seeks to stop the shooting of prairie dogs on public lands including the 200,000-acre Pawnee National Grassland, northeast of Greeley, and the 500,000-acre Cimarron and Comanche National Grassland, which straddles the Colorado-Kansas state line. 

CPW currently enforces a season on public-land prairie dog hunting from June 15 through February. The new petition asks for a year-round ban. CPW’s written response to the commissioners after reviewing it said the petitioners’ intention was to ban all killing of prairie dogs on public lands, not just by shooting.

The ban would not affect shooting on private land or a county’s authority to kill prairie dogs to address agricultural damage under state law. Tutchton has said it won’t affect land ranchers lease for grazing, either. And he said a naturally occurring plague that regularly wipes out prairie dog colonies keeps the animals’ populations in check. 

The stout-bodied rodents are deemed a keystone species by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, because dozens of other wildlife depend on them — most notably the endangered black-footed ferret, in Colorado. 

But during the meeting in Fort Morgan, commissioners Dallas May, Tai Jacober and Frances Silva Blayney said the commission was eroding the public trust by rushing the petition through the rulemaking process.

Captive-bred black-footed ferrets are released into prairie dog burrows on Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2021, at May Ranch in Lamar. Black-footed ferrets were assumed to be extinct until 1981 when a dog discovered one in Wyoming. They are primarily carnivorous, feed on prairie dogs and are the only ferret subspecies native to North America. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun)

A rushed public process 

During the rulemaking process, CPW staff gives the commission alternatives to what is requested in a petition, based on stakeholder engagement and best available science. 

But in September, several commissioners pushed to move up the review phase from the meeting date CPW staff recommended — Jan. 14 and 15 in Denver — to Nov. 4 and 5 in Fort Morgan. 

Silva Blayney, a commissioner representing outfitters, wanted to know if staff had had adequate time to engage with enough stakeholders to consider all of the possible alternatives. 

A CPW representative said due to the shortened window, staff was only able to present two alternatives: either the “status quo” — keep allowing unlimited recreational shooting — or the ban requested in the petition. 

During public comments on the second day of the meeting, much of the criticism leveled at the commission was over the truncating of that window. 

Callie Scritchfield, a Rio Blanco County commissioner, criticized the commission for not following the guidance of CPW staff, “whose science and procedures are critical for the commission to follow.”

She also told the story of a farming couple in their 80s who over a decade watched prairie dogs eat 300 acres of their dry land alfalfa and who saw no point in replanting it because it would be destroyed again.

But a neighbor hired shooters to try to control the rodent population, she said, and after 6,000 confirmed kills on 40 acres, no one could notice the difference (in the population) the next year. “So while this shows (shooting) doesn’t eradicate the prairie dogs, it proves…shooting is a necessary ongoing management tool when others fail.”

During the commissioners’ opening remarks, Rebecca Niemiec, who fills the commission’s at-large seat, showed a video of a man in camo lying on the ground picking off prairie dogs with a long range rifle.  

When it ended, Silva Blayney said “this video is not reflective of who I am as a commissioner. That is not what we stand for. That is what the young people today like to call a shock videos. And it’s the lowest form of debate. We are better than that.”

Tutchton said “stakeholder processes are kicking the can down the road when the commission is the responsible entity to make the decision.” And he has said shooting prairie dogs with “high-powered, high-velocity ammunition so they explode in a ‘red mist’ of entrails and organs,” is not something the commission should support.