Groups Sue over Poison Plan

September 23, 2004
By Steve Miller, Journal Staff Writer

DENVER — Eight conservation groups asked a federal judge Wednesday to stop a state-federal plan to poison and shoot prairie dogs on federal land in western South Dakota's Conata Basin.

The groups said the state-federal prairie dog control plan, announced by Gov. Mike Rounds on Aug. 13, would violate federal environmental laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Forest Management Act.

The conservation and environmental groups also said the planned poisoning and shooting of prairie dogs would imperil endangered black-footed ferrets reintroduced into Conata Basin just south of Badlands National Park in the mid-1990s. Prairie dogs make up 90 percent of the ferrets' diet.

Nebraska National Forest supervisor Don Bright said last month that poisoning and shooting prairie dogs under the new plan could begin as early as Oct. 1. Poisoning had been banned since the federal government declared in 2000 that prairie dogs deserved protection as a threatened species.

The state-federal plan came in response to ranchers' complaints that prairie dogs are damaging the federal grassland where they graze their cattle and are streaming onto their adjacent private lands, ruining that ground for grazing as well.

The plan was announced a day after Interior Secretary Gale Norton dropped the black-tailed prairie dog from the threatened species candidate list.

Both Norton's "delisting" and the new control plan came after pressure from South Dakota political leaders, efforts by state officials to write a state prairie dog conservation/management plan, and lobbying by grazing groups including the South Dakota Stockgrowers Association.

Jonathan Proctor of the Predator Conservation Alliance, one of the groups involved in the suit, repeated his concern that Conata Basin is the only public land area in the Great Plains with prairie dog colonies big enough to sustain a viable ferret population.

"This back-room deal to destroy critical black-footed ferret habitat is a breach of the public trust," Proctor said. "Our lawsuit is a last-ditch effort to bring some sanity and justice to this situation."

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday morning in Denver, names the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service as well as those agencies' regional directors, as defendants.

The federal agency directors could not be reached for comment Wednesday afternoon.

However, Bright, who is based at Nebraska National Forest headquarters in Chadron, Neb., has said repeatedly that the state-federal plan announced in August does not violate the forest's new management plan, which was finished last spring.

A central contention of the lawsuit is that the federal agencies developed the poisoning and shooting plan without seeking public input or analyzing the plan's effect on the environment, thus violating the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), according to the groups' attorney, Jay Tutchton of Denver.

"NEPA in a nutshell says that before taking an action that significantly affects the environment, federal agencies must consider alternatives and invite public comment," Tutchton said in a phone interview Wednesday. "Clearly the plan was put together with a bunch of feds sitting around a table with no public involvement whatsoever. There was no consideration of alternatives besides poisoning and shooting," he said. "NEPA simply doesn't allow that."

Bright, however, said the original ferret reintroduction agreement included provisions to protect the ability of Conata Basin ranchers to make a living from grazing livestock.

Nebraska National Forest officials in June said they would conduct an environmental impact statement before any poisoning would take place on the grasslands, but an EIS was not part of the August plan agreed to by the Forest Service, the two other federal agencies, and the state.

Bright said last week that an environmental analysis is not necessary because APHIS, not the Forest Service, would administer the poisoning plan.

Tutchton said it remains to be seen "whether or not the Forest Service can evade its own land management plan by letting another federal agency poison prairie dogs. Obviously, there's some hypocrisy there. We're supposed to have one government." He also pointed out that the Forest Service would provide the money for poisoning to APHIS.

Tutchton said he was not sure when U.S. District Judge Phillip S. Figa would rule on the case.

In addition to the conservation groups, public opposition to the state-federal poisoning and shooting plan has come from tribal members and the American Zoological Association.

"By poisoning prairie dogs, we are killing black-footed ferrets, eagles, swift fox, and many other native wildlife," said Rosalie Little Thunder, a Lakota from Rapid City.

Other groups bringing the suit are Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Native Ecosystems, Forest Guardians, Great Plains Restoration Council, the Humane Society of the United States and Prairie Hills Audubon Society.

Contact Steve Miller at 394-8417 or steve.miller@rapidcityjournal.com 

Copyright © 2004 The Rapid City Journal
  Rapid City, SD

Conservation Groups Seek Court Order to Halt Prairie Dog Killing

September 23, 2004

CHET BROKAW
Associated Press

PIERRE, S.D. - Conservation groups went to court Wednesday seeking to prevent federal agencies from beginning a program that would poison and shoot black-tailed prairie dogs on federal land in southwestern South Dakota.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Denver, argues that the new plan to reduce the prairie dog population should be blocked because it violates national environmental and forest-management laws.

Federal officials declined to comment on the lawsuit Wednesday.

Last month, U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton removed black-tailed prairie dogs from the list of candidates being considered for designation as endangered species. That move allowed states to take more steps to control prairie dogs.

South Dakota and federal officials then announced an agreement that calls for poisoning and shooting prairie dogs in the Conata Basin area of the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands to prevent them from spreading to private land.

Ranchers complain there are too many prairie dogs on federal land and that the animals are moving onto private property, where they ruin livestock grazing by destroying the grass.

The lawsuit argues it makes no sense to kill prairie dogs in the only location where the endangered black-footed ferret has been successfully reintroduced. Prairie dogs make up 90 percent of the ferrets' diet, experts say.

The lawsuit contends the control plan is illegal because no environmental assessment was done and the poisoning would run counter to current management plans for the federal land.

State Agriculture Secretary Larry Gabriel, who worked with federal officials to develop the control plan, said it's unfortunate the lawsuit might hold up efforts to protect the land from an overabundance of prairie dogs.

"It's very frustrating, and in fact it angers me," Gabriel told The Associated Press.

Gabriel said he understands that prairie dogs must be kept in the area to support black-footed ferrets, and he said the control plan is designed to protect the ferrets.

Eight conservation groups filed the lawsuit Wednesday against the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Agriculture Department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

Jonathan Proctor of the Predator Conservation Alliance said the conservation groups did not want to file the lawsuit, but had to go to court because no solution could be negotiated.

"The reason we filed this is because this is the only successful black-footed ferret recovery area in the world," he said.

Proctor said he believes the loss of grass in the area was caused not by prairie dogs, but rather by livestock grazing during recent drought years. The conservation groups do not want to halt livestock grazing on federal land, but they believe grazing should be stopped during bad droughts, he said.

Prairie dogs do not have to be killed, Proctor said. A better solution would be to give ranchers payments to offset any loss of livestock grazing caused by prairie dogs' destruction of grass, and the Forest Service has some money for such payments, he said.

Colonies of black-tailed prairie dogs once were once widespread from Canada to Mexico, but the population has decreased through much of that range by disease, eradication programs and urban sprawl.

The prairie dogs are found east of the continental divide in Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska. They have disappeared in Arizona but are still found in Canada and Mexico, according to the Fish and Wildlife
Service.

Officials have said South Dakota has the healthiest population because its prairie dog towns have not been hit with the plague that decimated populations in other states.

Environmental groups in 1988 sought to have the black-tailed prairie dog protected. The Fish and Wildlife Service determined in 2000 that the prairie dog might deserve protection as a threatened species, but the agency announced Aug. 12 that new population estimates show the prairie dog does not meet the definition of threatened.

The control plan announced in August allows poisoning on federal land in a buffer zone of up to one mile from private land.

Gabriel said the expanding prairie dog population along with dry conditions have prevented federal agencies from protecting land in the Conata Basin.

The state agricultural secretary also said biologists have reported that the prairie dog population is out of balance, with too few young animals. The prairie dogs are reportedly eating their young, he said.

"As a person who cares immensely for all animals, I think that's a very deplorable situation," Gabriel said.

Updated 19 July 2006 .