Columnist Clay Evans of the Daily Camera points out in his column how the Boulder City and County prairie dog colonies have sown the seeds of their own destruction. His comments are made in context to a recently passed law allowing the City to be involved in deciding the fate of prarie dogs on private property. The City previously had stricter regulations but was informed by the state that those laws contradicted state law.
I watched some of the debate over the new regulations and the regulations that were passed were proposed after hour of debate on more restrictive suggestions. There are a couple of passages that I find illuminating in Mr. Evans columns…
But Boulder has begun to see the ill effects of its good intentions, and
the days of unsustainable relocation are ending. On Jan. 19, the City Council
adopted a policy that would allow landowners to kill prairie dogs under strict
conditions. Landowners must apply for permission to kill prairie dogs and prove
that they have explored all alternatives. Then the public will have two months
to make non-lethal suggestions of their own. The city manager then can delay
killing for up to a year if any options warrant further exploration.
(Relocation, keep in mind, is increasingly difficult, caught between the state’s
foolish law banning the transport of prairie dogs across county lines without
the explicit permission of commissioners, and Boulder County’s limited suitable
habitat.)
I really don’t like the liberty given to the City Manager. First of all, there’s no land in the City to relocate the prairie dogs to and secondly there’s no space in the County either. Is the Manager simply going to create land out of “nothing” or start arm twisting to get other governments or even private citizens to open up land for the “dogs”? To me, it’s simply a sign of the environmentalists invading personal property rights combined with both the City and the Counties desire to see as little construction as possible. Oh, I nearly forgot, it isn’t mentioned that the private property owner has to pay an application fee (or some type of fee) to start this process. This fee is on the order of $1000!
Furthermore, what’s Clays issue with laws restricting the transportation of the “dogs” across county lines? Given that we know how they mulitply and destroy land, seems like getting permission from a neighboring county where you want to “drop them off” so to speak isn’t asking a whole heck of alot. If the City and County of Boulder want to protect them, they created the problem, they need to fix it. Perhaps they can buy or condemn private property to allow the prairie dogs room to roam!?
Another interesting fact is the City has spent $600,o00 controlling the spread of prairie dogs in the last 4 years. Hello…. that’s not how I want my tax money being spent, especially when the City budget is under stress.
