Conservationists claim golf course's trapping, moving of prairie dogs is killing some
By Patty Henetz
The Salt Lake Tribune
The beleaguered Utah prairie dog is running wild on Cedar City's public golf course.
But catching the critters and releasing them elsewhere is killing them, which is why the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service needs to find a different way to manage the threatened species, a new lawsuit says.
Three Western conservation organizations - Forest Guardians, Utah Environmental Congress and the Center for Native Ecosystems - along with naturalist-author Terry Tempest Williams on Tuesday sued the Fish and Wildlife Service. They claim the agency's plan to protect the threatened species actually would exterminate them, an act they say is illegal under federal environmental protection law.
In the middle of the dispute is the Cedar Ridge golf course, where Utah prairie dogs not only pock fairways and the rough with their mounds, they snatch golf balls and hide them in their burrows.
Such behavior, as maddening as it may be, causes no harm to golfers, said Nicole Rosmarino, senior biologist with New Mexico-based Forest Guardians. "The prairie dogs have been on that golf course a long time, and golfers continue to use it," she said Wednesday.
If the Fish and Wildlife Service continues with its habitat conservation plan that allows city employees to trap the prairie dogs for the federal agency to haul away, the animals will die and the agency will have violated the federal endangered Species Act, said Kevin Mueller of the Utah Environmental Congress.
The lawsuit seeks a court order to halt a habitat conservation plan that depends on relocating the federally designated threatened species to other counties and uses a failed animal preserve to offset the species population losses. U.S. District Judge Dee Benson has been assigned the case.
One of the complaint's main claims is that Fish and Wildlife didn't properly consider leaving the prairie dogs on the golf course.
However, Elise Boeke, a lead field biologist for the agency, said the agency did consider allowing the dogs to colonize the course rough. But had such a plan succeeded, the animals would have been isolated in fragmented habitat. "They essentially would have dogs in a cage out there," she said.
Besides, the burrowing animals would just dig under the greens and fairways because they prefer to eat the manicured grass over range scrub. "They're not stupid," Boeke said. Trying to keep them off the grass "is like putting a bowl of cream next to a cat and telling it not to drink it."
Running a golf course with prairie dogs is a difficult proposition. Cedar Ridge golf pro John Evans said the prairie dogs have probably stolen thousands of golf balls.
"I've seen them pushing the balls into their holes," said Evans. "They have more golf balls than I do. It's driving us crazy."
Then the rodents clean house. "When it rains they push all the balls out," said Cedar City Manager Ron Chandler. "You see a circle of balls around their burrows."
Key to the habitat conservation plan is a 19-acre preserve in Wild Pea Hollow, county land that has been set aside permanently for Utah prairie dogs. The plan calls for reseeding adjacent federal land to make it suitable for the animals.
The conservationists say that part of the plan has failed miserably. The feds' own census counts show that of 417 Utah prairie dogs in the Wild Pea area in 2006, only seven lived to this year. Transplanted prairie dog colonies generally have at least a 90 percent mortality rate.
The Iron County habitat conservation plan, adopted in 1998, allows relocation of prairie dogs from the golf course and Paiute tribal lands but doesn't authorize the total removal of the population, Rosmarino said.
This past season was the first time city employees caught the animals by baiting cage traps with peanut butter and oatmeal. Chandler said they caught 472 dogs on just three golf course holes.
Boeke said the captive dogs were released on U.S. Forest Service land in Garfield County. Less than a quarter of them survived by this fall. She said that was a good yield.
"We don't expect every prairie dog that we translocate will survive," she said. But "if we can get even a small percentage to survive, those become the founders of the colony on the new site."
MARK HAVNES contributed to this report.