Jeffco officials are against proposed prairie dog plan

Jefferson County officials are recommending against a controversial proposal to move a colony of prairie dogs from Longmont to Rocky Flats, the former nuclear weapons manufacturing site north of Arvada.

In a letter dated Wednesday and made public Thursday, county manager Donald Davis told consultants working with developer HSW Land that county staff “would not recommend relocation of these destructive rodent pests from Boulder County to Jefferson County.”

Davis used the stark language — “destructive rodent pests” — found in state statutes to describe prairie dogs, which are considered by wildlife experts to be a vital species in Colorado’s prairie ecology.

A spokeswoman said Jefferson County already is managing prairie dog colonies and that habitat for the animals is mostly at capacity.

HSW wants to develop land in Longmont where up to 200 prairie dogs live. The company told the Longmont Times-Call last month that it preferred to move the animals to a new home rather than kill them or donate them as food for raptor rehabilitation or black-footed ferret recovery programs.

Federal officials in charge of the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge told the developer there is room at the 6,200-acre facility 16 miles northwest of Denver to place the prairie dogs.

That triggered a loud reaction last week from several citizen groups, who oppose opening the refuge to the public because of what they say are the potential health hazards that exist on site from decades of work on nuclear weapons components.

Specifically, the group raised concerns about the burrowing prairie dogs unearthing potentially deadly plutonium contamination that was left buried in place after a 10year cleanup of the noxious site that wrapped up in 2005.

Officials from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment dismissed those claims, saying the colony would be nearly a mile away from the 1,300-acre core of Rocky Flats, where the nuclear triggers were actually assembled. They said the animals would not come into contact with any buried contamination.

Under state law, counties have the authority to approve or turn down a request to relocate prairie dogs from one county to another. Davis wrote in his letter that the Jefferson County commissioners had not yet received a formal relocation request but that staff was recommending against the move nonetheless.

Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge is scheduled to open to the public next summer.