This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
It's understandable why many Utahns can't make sense of the collision of biology and politics that defines efforts to protect the Utah prairie dog.
The prairie dog is a threatened species as defined by the Endangered Species Act (ESA), but there are thousands of them. There are so many, in fact, that the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, which enforces the act, allows hundreds of them to be killed at three Utah airports and a golf course in Cedar City. That's allowed because there is an agreement to protect a similar number of animals somewhere else in Utah.
Prairie dogs and humans seek the same fertile places. While roughly a quarter of Utah is private land, that private land has more than half the known prairie dogs. For the farmers and ranchers who form much of the political force in rural Utah, the idea that there aren't enough dogs is preposterous. They're often breaking their irrigation equipment on prairie dog mounds.
The feds, however, don't really count the dogs on private land, even as they insist those dogs must be protected. They know they exist, but their job under the ESA is to make sure the species can go on forever. And that means they focus on the dogs living on land that is dedicated to their protection, something most private landowners are not willing to do. In fact, if the prairie dog lost its protection, it can be argued the farmers would return to the kind of eradication efforts that dropped their populations in the first place.
But it isn't even clear how many dogs there were to begin with. The Utah prairie dog was among the first animals to be listed as "endangered" when the ESA passed in 1973, but within 10 years that listing had been downgraded to "threatened." Is that because the population rebounded because of federal protection? Actually, the feds acknowledge it's more likely that the ESA's directive to find all the prairie dogs led to a lot more animals being discovered.
So all this feeds the anti-federal flames. Wayne County commissioners tell the state not to sell land to the Nature Conservancy to preserve prairie dogs. Rep. Chris Stewart introduces a bill to force Fish and Wildlife to include dogs on private land (even if there is no habitat protection for those dogs), and the feds are sued by a group of Cedar City landowners calling themselves the People for the Ethical Treatment of Property Owners.
Fish and Wildlife biologists are in a tough spot. They believe the dog is on its way to removal from the threatened list, but the law requires a five-year period to see if the populations really are sustaining. That clock hasn't even started yet because they're still trying to secure more habitat. In the meantime, the political and legal fights go on.
Protecting the Utah prairie dog remains the right thing to do, but this process will never be a shining example of government problem solving.