May 13, 2001
By Chris Barge, Boulder Daily Camera Staff Writer
"Getting rid of prairie dogs" has a different
meaning in some parts of Boulder County than in others.
In Boulder, it means gently moving the black-tailed critters
from one colony to another.
In horse country southwest of Hygiene, it apparently means
poisoning the pests and burying them in their holes.
The difference was made clear this week when a Boulder
County zoning enforcement officer stopped three people in the act of poisoning
and burying a colony of prairie dogs on a 50-acre property operated by the
nonprofit Colorado Horse Rescue.
The officer, Ed Meacham, was sent to the property Tuesday
afternoon after neighbors called Boulder County Commissioner Ron Stewart to
complain about the exterminations.
Meacham said the two men and the woman who were there were
armed with shovels and a can he presumed to be filled with poison.
"I walked into the field and asked them what they
were doing and they said, 'We're killing prairie dogs,' and I told them to
stop that," Meacham said.
Two neighbors who live across the street from the Horse
Rescue property said Friday that they also witnessed the three people killing
prairie dogs.
Graham Billingsly, county Land Use Department director,
said Colorado Horse Rescue in 1999 agreed to relocate a colony of prairie
dogs without killing them in exchange for permission to operate on the land.
He said the commitment had "the force of regulation," even though
prairie dogs are pests under state law and it is legal to kill them on private
property.
Horse Rescue spokeswoman Penny Storchevoy said she did
not know about the incident. The group's barn manager, Nan Millett, said the
organization had "gone by every rule that's been put down in front of
us."
Depending on who is talking, the incident was either the
result of blatant disregard for the county's rules or the result of a genuine
misunderstanding.
The county in 1999 ordered Horse Rescue to revegetate the
dry, weed-infested land with native grasses and plants to prevent dust and
erosion. Millett said revegetating the land while protecting prairie dogs
was difficult because the rodents ate the grass seed.
"It failed miserably," said Rob Alexander, a
county Parks and Open Space Department employee who was asked by Commissioner
Stewart in 1999 to head an advisory committee to help with the revegetation
effort.
At the property Friday, hundreds of prairie dogs scurried
back and forth among their holes, sometimes between the hoofs of horses.
Alexander said Horse Rescue board members Jay Hearst and
Harvey Yoakum told him in January that they were going to "get rid of
the prairie dogs."
"It was clear to me they were going to exterminate
them rather than remove them," Alexander said.
Alexander said he was not aware at the time that the company
had committed to not killing prairie dogs. He said he neither advised them
to stop nor to go forward with their plans to exterminate.
County zoning enforcement officer Meacham said that when
he stopped the prairie-dog killings in progress Tuesday, the workers called
Yoakum on a cellular telephone from the field and asked him to speak with
Meacham. Yoakum told him that "somebody at Parks and Open Space"
had approved the extermination, Meacham said.
Hearst and Yoakum were unavailable for comment Friday.
Hearst resigned from the board May 1, and Yoakum joined
the board early this year, Alexander said. Both worked with Alexander as liaisons
to the revegetation advisory committee for the horse rescue group.
Storchevoy, a board member as well as a spokeswoman for
the group, said Horse Rescue tries to avoid conflicts with wildlife.
She said she did not hear of the allegations of poisoning
until after animal-rights activists, including some from Rocky Mountain Animal
Defense, spent four hours Tuesday night pulling poison-soaked newspapers out
of prairie dog burrows.
The activists were eventually ordered to leave by the Sheriff's
Office.
The horse rescue group had asked the state Division of
Wildlife for help to move the prairie dogs under the division's Cooperative
Habitat Program.
The division spent $2,385 to create a habitat for the prairie
dogs and other wildlife on 35 acres of the rescue group's property, plus more
for labor and equipment, division spokesman Todd Malmsbury said.
Wildlife manager Katie Kinney said the rescue group might
be asked to reimburse the state for those costs.
"There was no point in planting the habitat if they
were going to kill the wildlife," Kinney said.
Susan Miller of Wild Places, an organization that relocates
prairie dogs, said the horse rescue group should be held accountable for violating
an agreement with the county and with all the people that worked hard to relocate
the prairie dogs there.
"Basically what they did was dotted all their 'i's
and crossed all their 't's and then went ahead and snubbed their nose at everybody
and killed all the prairie dogs," Miller said.
But neighbor Suzanne Anderson, who volunteers with the
horse rescue group to help save abused and abandoned horses, said she condoned
the prairie dog killings because the "rodents" were taking over
the pasture.
Colorado Horse Rescue provides shelter, care, rehabilitation
and adoption services for abused, abandoned, neglected and unwanted horses.
"When it comes down to saving a horse or a prairie
dog, I will save the horse," Anderson said.
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