Praire Rats do not need protection....

Feds plan to study prairie dogs for possible endangered status
By GARY HARMON
The Daily Sentinel

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

A week after a Colorado state agency refused to ban shooting white-tailed prairie dogs, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Tuesday it will study the rodent to determine if it should be protected as an endangered species.

The decision was a vindication of efforts frustrated in 2004 to have the prairie dog protected, said Josh Pollock, conservation director for the Center for Native Ecosystems, who called the decision a “victory for sound science.”

The decision to study the white-tailed prairie dog population “opens a valuable opportunity for the scientific community to study for two years and find out what kind of population is out there in the ground.”

The decision to study the white-tailed prairie dog won’t have any effect on the Colorado Wildlife Commission’s decision last week to reject a proposed ban on prairie-dog hunting.

“Unfortunately, the white-tailed prairie dog is largely unprotected in the places they still live,” and the only federal action that would change that is listing the rodents as an endangered species, Pollock said.

The federal agency’s decision, however, didn’t sit well with Club 20, the Western Slope lobbying and promotional organization.

“We’re more concerned about the decline of the subspecies called the American farmer, which the prairie dog is contributing to,” Club 20 Executive Director Reeves Brown said.

Prairie dogs destroy pasture and damage herds, said Carlyle Currier, a Collbran rancher who said studies by Colorado State University show that cows thrive less in pasture that is infested with prairie dogs than in those without the other rodents.

Eastern Colorado ranchers battled designation of the black-tailed prairie dog as endangered by counting them themselves and finding hundreds of thousands more than were counted by environmental organizations, said Dave Whittlesey, a Delta County bison and elk rancher.
“I think the case will be the same here,” he said.

White-tailed prairie dogs are found across the western half of Wyoming, western Colorado, the eastern portion of Utah, and a small portion of southern Montana.

The white-tailed prairie dog is a stout rodent, 13 to 15 inches long and weighing one to three pounds. It has a short, white-tipped tail, large eyes, a blackish brown cheek patch above and below each eye, and a tan-brown pelt. It’s genetically different from the black-tailed prairie dog, which has a black-tipped tail.

White-tailed prairie dogs are generally found at elevations between 5,000 and 10,000 feet in desert grasslands and shrub grasslands.

Prairie-dog varmint shooting is a “decent part of our business,” said Wes Stout of Gene Taylor’s Sporting Goods in Grand Junction, who noted also that sport shooters like the 90-day period from April to June in which they can’t be hunted on public lands. That allows the animals to maintain their numbers, he said.

The Fish and Wildlife Service will accept comments and information until July 7. Comments can be submitted electronically via the Federal eRulemaking Portal at www.regulations.gov, or they can be mailed or hand delivered to Public Comments Processing, Attn: FWS-R6-ES-2008-0053; Division of Policy and Directives Management; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 4401 N. Fairfax Drive, Suite 222; Arlington, Va. 22203.
-------------------------------------------------
What's next? Protection for Feral and Stray Dogs & Cats?
I always get a kick out of people who believe that the world is made out of Rainbows and Puppy's.
Perhaps someday this people will become educated in facts and not emotion.