Prairie dogs’ presence in Boulder notches new high in acreage
The city of Boulder’s Open Space & Mountain Parks’ land system is no stranger to prairie dogs. And depending who you ask, that can either be a good or bad thing.
“What we’re concerned with is this prairie dog occupation of these irrigated agricultural lands that is a small part of our landscape,” Andy Pelster, OSMP agriculture and water stewardship senior manager, said Friday.
Boulder Open Space & Mountain Parks land has experienced a “widespread expansion” of prairie dogs to 5,196 acres, a new high in the city’s mapping of the issue, according to a staff presentation Tuesday night.
OSMP manages more than 45,000 acres of permanently protected land and wants to keep prairie dogs, which are burrowing rodents, out of its irrigated land, in particular.
“We certainly want to conserve native habitats and the wildlife that inhabit them but we’re also trying to balance that with providing agricultural land for local producers to grow food and livestock on,” Pelster said.
So far in 2022, more than 500 prairie dogs were trapped at OSMP’S Oasis property and relocated to the Waneka colony in the southern grasslands.
Roughly a dozen prairie dogs were also relocated from the Mesa Sand & Gravel exclusion area.
“We only relocate prairie dogs on our landscape into spots where they have been recorded in the past,” Pelster said. “We’re not trying to make new habitat for prairie dogs. We’re only trying to put them back where they have chosen to occupy the land in the past.”
Elizabeth Black, who is a founding member of Health Ecosystems & Agricultural Lands, thought the city should be doing more to get a handle on the amount of prairie dogs on irrigated land.
“We feel that the problem has reached such a (large) proportion,” Black said. “There are so many prairie dogs out there.”
To Black, trapping and relocating prairie dogs is too costly, time- consuming and an ineffective way of keeping them off agricultural land.
The city spent approximately $140,000 on prairie dog relocation efforts, barriers for relocation areas and other conflict reduction and management in 2022.
“If you are at all interested in food production, irrigated agricultural lands are pretty much it for food production here in Boulder County,” Black said. “We feel that our remaining lands that have irrigation on them are very precious and need to be protected.”
Lethal control of prairie dogs, which is generally done using carbon monoxide, was carried out on approximately 124 acres of OSMP irrigated land in 2022.
The city of Boulder hosted its annual prairie dog update virtually on Tuesday. And during the roughly 90- minute- long meeting, OSMP staff discussed on- going projects such as implementing a prairie dog barrier costsharing program with neighboring private property owners.
Staff had planned to offer the program in 2022 but postponed doing so in order to focus on other priorities such as assessment recovery in the wake of the Marshall fire, which burned more than 6,000 acres but did not negatively impact the local prairie dog population.
Instead, OSMP land has seen the “widespread expansion” to 5,196 acres, according to staff’s Tuesday night report
“Which is the most we’ve ever mapped,” Pelster said Friday. “We are working to control in some select locations but … based on our mapping data, prairie dog populations and prairie dog colonies and ecosystems (are) thriving pretty well on the Open Space & Mountain Parks’ land system.”
Lindsey Sterling Krank, who is the director of the Prairie Dog Conflict Resolution Team for the Humane Society of the United States, said Friday that she was grateful to Boulder for its relocation efforts.
“I have appreciated the city implementing non-lethal management for prairie dogs,” Sterling Krank said. “I think we need to do everything we can to keep all the biodiversity we have left on the planet.”
Sterling Krank helped relocate prairie dogs from the Oasis property to the Waneka Colony.
“I hope we can all keep working together to reduce ( lethal management methods) and stay focused on coexistence,” Sterling Krank said.