Post by itsallaboutme on Apr 29, 2005 7:22:08 GMT -5
I thought this went hand in hand with killing gophers in Minn.
Lawmakers discuss prairie dog bill
By KEVIN O'HANLON / The Associated Press
Since there are more prairie dogs than previously believed, one state senator wants Nebraska to have a way to control them when necessary.
"This is not an extermination plan," Sen. LeRoy Louden of Ellsworth told the Legislature's Agriculture Committee on Tuesday about his bill (LB673). "No one wants to eradicate all black tail prairie dogs."
Farmers and ranchers consider the prairie dog a pest, saying it destroys pastures and fields by digging holes and tunneling.
A revised census of black-tail prairie dogs last year prompted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove them from candidacy for threatened status on the federal Endangered Species list.
Louden's bill would allow counties to kill prairie dogs to keep their numbers under control.
He said prairie dogs have done significant damage to grassland during the ongoing drought.
"The species resorts to any means to survive," Louden said. "Not only do they eat all the vegetation, they eat all the plants' root systems. We now have a crisis."
Colonies of prairie dogs once inhabited as many as 100 million acres from Canada to Mexico.
Prairie dogs became candidates for threatened status in 2000 based on data that indicated the impacts on their populations from disease, chemical control and other lesser factors were substantial enough to warrant the designation.
But new census estimates collected in Nebraska and nine other states in the western Plains region showed the critters were more resilient than first thought.
The federal government for more than four years stopped poisoning prairie dogs while it decided whether they deserved to be protected.
Ranchers say prairie dogs soon invaded their ranches. The landowners were free to poison prairie dogs on their own property, but they say there was no point in doing that, because the animals would have quickly returned from government land.
In 2000, prairie dogs inhabited an estimated 676,000 acres in the United States.
That has now been revised to 1.8 million acres.
Using a general average of 10 animals per acre — which can vary — there are about 18 million prairie dogs in the country.
Mike Fritz, a Games and Parks Commission zoologist who oversaw Nebraska's prairie dog census, said the animals inhabit 137,000 acres in the state.
Using the 10-per-acre average, that would equate to nearly 1.4 million prairie dogs in a state of 1.6 million people.
In Nebraska, the largest concentrations of prairie dogs are in three areas: Custer and Lincoln counties south of North Platte; Chase and Dundy counties west of McCook; and Box Butte, Scotts Bluff, Morrill, Cheyenne and Deuel counties in the Panhandle.
Larry Dix, who was representing the Nebraska Association of County Officials, spoke against the bill.
He said while his group acknowledges that there is a prairie dog problem, it feels that many counties do not have the expertise to assess the situation and take appropriate action.
He said the group also worries about the expense of Louden's plan.
"This could almost go into the category of an unfunded mandate," he said.
The U.S. Forest Service plans to finish an environmental study by this summer on how to deal with prairie dogs over the long term.
Nebraska Legislature: www.unicam.state.ne.us/index.htm
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service endangered species program: endangered.fws.gov
