Protecting Prairie Dogs

A Utah district court has ruled that the Endangered Species Act has exceeded Congress’ authority to regulate private landowners. In a case involving the Utah prairie dog, which was listed as a threatened species in 1973, the court said that since prairie dogs were involved in interstate commerce, the federal government had no Constitutional authority to regulate them.

Ironically, the main threat to the Utah prairie dog before it was listed was none other than the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, which had the dual job of protecting endangered species and endangered pestiferous species. For decades, the Fish & Wildlife Service had poisoned prairie dogs throughout the West, saying they were bad for farmers and ranchers.

This poisoning continued even after the agency declared the black-footed ferret to be “the most endangered mammal in North America.” As it happens, black-footed ferrets get 99 percent of their food by eating prairie dogs, as well as make their homes in former prairie dog dens, but this didn’t stop the agency from poisoning prairie dogs.

When Utah prairie dog numbers fell to about 3,300 animals in 1972, the Fish & Wildlife Service listed it as threatened, and stopped poisoning them. Utah prairie dog numbers quickly recovered, and were estimated to exceed 8,000 in number by 2004. However, the feds continued to poison other prairie dogs throughout the West, leaving the black-footed ferret as endangered as ever. (The sordid story of the black-footed ferret is recounted here.)
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Despite the Fish & Wildlife Service’s best efforts to extirpate prairie dogs, conservative members of Congress didn’t trust it to not let its protective instincts take over, so in 1984 Congress transferred the wildlife-killing mission to the Department of Agriculture, which euphemistically called the new agency the “Wildlife Service.” Even after Utah prairie dog numbers recovered, the Fish & Wildlife Service–the real one–kept it listed so the newly formed Wildlife Service didn’t go wild and start poisoning them again.

As a listed species, the Fish & Wildlife Service wrote a recovery plan that forbade not only other federal agencies but private landowners from killing prairie dogs. The Antiplanner isn’t certain this was necessary; without the virtually unlimited resources of the federal government, private landowners would have a difficult time affording the cost of completely wiping out prairie dogs. But the Endangered Species Act doesn’t allow the Fish & Wildlife Service to determine whether measures are cost-effective or even truly necessary to protect listed species; instead, if it is listed then the most expensive measures to protect a species are all deemed legally required.

If the district court’s ruling is upheld on appeal, then the Fish & Wildlife Service will have to find a different way to protect prairie dogs. It could somehow make prairie dogs valuable, giving private landowners a reason to keep them around. It could pay private landowners not to poison them, something that might not even cost much as the damage prairie dogs do to range lands is probably vastly overestimated. It could create prairie dog reserves on federal lands–and there are a lot of federal lands in southern Utah where the Utah prairie dog lives. Or it could find private wildlife groups to pay the landowners and/or buy private lands to become prairie dog reserves.

In general, the Antiplanner believes many rare species of wildlife would be better off if protected by private parties than by the federal government. The district court ruling could lead to that outcome, which would be better for both private landowners and the wildlife.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

9 Responses to Protecting Prairie Dogs

  1. Fred_Z says:

    Lots of people who claim to believe in evolution don’t.

    If the ground squirrels can’t make it because of competition, including from humans, then they must die.

  2. bennett says:

    Wow! Remind me never to compete for resources with Fred. He’ll poison you!

  3. Frank says:

    No kidding, bennett.

    Competition? The federal government’s poisoning of the ecosystem is “competition”?

    Guess those Native Americans also couldn’t compete with federal armies, so they got what was coming to them (although the federal government repeatedly lied to and murdered them).

    Watching supposed conservatives defending egregiously harmful and completely unnecessary federal intervention in the ecosystem makes me laugh.

  4. gilfoil says:

    Big Government bureaucrats at the Center For Disease Control are wasting taxpayer dollars researching vaccines when they should let competition between humans and viruses take its natural course. And I’ll bet a lot of the scientists at the CDC claim to believe in evolution! What a bunch of hypocrites.

  5. Frank says:

    Gilfoil so funny.

    Everyone knows the CDC will be responsible for accidentally releasing some biological agent like small pox that will wipe out most of humanity. There is no good reason to have viable smallpox or most of the other bioagents they possess. (Unless weaponizing is a good reason.)

    I laugh so hard when so-called liberals defend agencies like the CDC.

  6. Fred_Z says:

    @Bennett: Nah, I wouldn’t poison you, you’re human. Right?

    I also have gophers in my lawn. Them I poison, trap, shoot, monoxide, drown and shout at. Got my nephews to try with a bow and arrow. So far its at best a tie.

    I don’t understand why some of you think poisoning competitors is not natural. Happens very frequently in nature, even in plants. I have a black walnut beneath which very little can grow. Ever seen a scorpion dispatch a fellow scorpion?

  7. Frank says:

    Wait. You’re shooting a gun inside city limits?

  8. Fred_Z says:

    Frank, please don’t be a concrete dwelling, cappuccino sucking urbanite.

    My lawn is in the heart of the East Kootenays, just north of 49, and yes, one can have a lawn in the sticks. That’s why the little ground squirrel bastards may have the upper hand. But if I go down, I’ll go down fighting. next summer, I try a Flamenwerfer.

  9. Frank says:

    I live in a wood dwelling, not concrete, and suck ales, not cappuccino. Thank you very much. I also grew up on a farm and moved to the desolate Great Basin in my early teens. Then I spent a decade in national parks.

    So. Kindly stop with the urbanite label.

    Good luck winning the war on rats. Maybe instead of poising them or burning them, you could eat them instead?

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