RanUtah
New member
This is an article I found yesterday in the June/July 2002 edition of Outdoor Life.
Dog Fight
New regulations arrive.
The current brouhaha over the black-tailed prairie dog, long considered a pest and a regularly a favorite target of Western hunters, began in 2000, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that the prairie dog should be afforded some legal protection because of habitat loss. However, the agency recommended delaying further action because it determined that more than two dozen other species were in greater need of protection.
In the meantime, several state wildlife agencies have made moves to prevent futher federal regulation of the prairie dog and farmers and ranchers are fighting to maintain management of prairie dogs, whose vast "towns" can create a hazard for livestock.
In Montana, the status of prairie dogs has been changed from "varmint" to "non-game wildlife in the need of management", which restricts hunting them on federal lands for three months a year.
Wyoming has agreed to take an inventory of the state's black-tailed prairie dog population. This while the U.S. Forest Service supervisor Mary Peterson has signed an order prohibiting the shooting of prairie dogs on part of the Thunder Basin National Grassland.
In Nebraska, the game and Parks Commission passed a resolution to continue studing the status of the black tailed prairie dog, --J.R. Absher
Dog Fight
New regulations arrive.
The current brouhaha over the black-tailed prairie dog, long considered a pest and a regularly a favorite target of Western hunters, began in 2000, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that the prairie dog should be afforded some legal protection because of habitat loss. However, the agency recommended delaying further action because it determined that more than two dozen other species were in greater need of protection.
In the meantime, several state wildlife agencies have made moves to prevent futher federal regulation of the prairie dog and farmers and ranchers are fighting to maintain management of prairie dogs, whose vast "towns" can create a hazard for livestock.
In Montana, the status of prairie dogs has been changed from "varmint" to "non-game wildlife in the need of management", which restricts hunting them on federal lands for three months a year.
Wyoming has agreed to take an inventory of the state's black-tailed prairie dog population. This while the U.S. Forest Service supervisor Mary Peterson has signed an order prohibiting the shooting of prairie dogs on part of the Thunder Basin National Grassland.
In Nebraska, the game and Parks Commission passed a resolution to continue studing the status of the black tailed prairie dog, --J.R. Absher