Prairie dog not listed as threatened

By Hector Gutierrez, Rocky Mountain News
November 10, 2004

The white-tailed prairie dog will be kept off the lists of threatened or endangered species, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Tuesday.

Environmental groups seeking endangered status for the white-tailed prairie dog, which makes its home in the sage plains of northwestern Colorado, did not provide sufficient scientific data, the service said.

Conservation groups seeking to protect the the prairie dog under the Endangered Species Act were at a loss over the service's findings.

Proponents said they provided substantial scientific evidence that the white-tailed prairie dog population was dying off because of the plague and pressures from gas and oil exploration.

"We'll look carefully at what they did and decide where to go from here, especially when they act so blatantly and illegally like that and make a decision that flies in the face of science," said Jacob Smith, executive director for the Center for Native Ecosystems, which petitioned in 2002 to list the white-tailed prairie dog as a threatened species.

Smith suggested that the next move for his group would be to sue the service and request that a court order the government to reconsider its decision.

Richard Reading, director of conservation biology at the Denver Zoological Foundation, said he was disappointed that the service did not give any detailed rationale.

However, Sharon Rose, Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman, said the service's staff did not have adequate information from the petitioners about how the plague was reducing prairie dog colonies.

Moreover, while the petitioners pointed out that gas and oil exploration is occuring in areas where the white-tailed prairie dog exists, they did not provide any specific data that the development is uprooting the colonies, Rose said.