Humane Prairie Dog Removal Services Grow with Construction Industry By Garry Boulard More construction firms are working with groups to humanely remove prairie dogs prior to development. Trent Botkin has a sure-fire method for figuring out how many prairie dogs may be living on a given acre of land. “Under normal circumstances, its 10 to 20 prairie dogs per acre,” says Botkin, who is the owner of Eco Solutions LLC, a Santa Fe-based prairie dog removal service. “But sometimes in urban development, where prairie dogs have moved to the one vacant lot that is left on one block, or the one vacant corner left at an intersection, it could be as many as 50 prairie dogs per acre,” he adds. That Botkin has studied such things shows that he knows his business. That his business is to remove prairie dogs from work sites reflects a demand on the part of developers and builders who are increasingly finding new answers to a challenge that is as western as cactus and open skies. “More and more developers are looking for a better way of dealing with prairie dogs,” says Emily Renn, a conservation biologist in Flagstaff who does volunteer work with a group called Habitat Harmony that does prairie dog relocations. “When we find out about a site that is going to be built on and has a prairie dog colony, we try to make a presentation to the developer to explain the ecological benefits of the prairie dog and what the process is for doing an actual relocation,” says Renn. Not all developers are willing to hold up a project in order to remove an animal that some regard as nothing more than a deceptively cute pest with teeth that can bite through underground cables and irrigation pipes. One who has is the Phoenix-based company Vintage Partners, which paid the Habitat Harmony group to remove more than 1,000 burrowed prairie dogs from an 80-acre site in Flagstaff that was scheduled for grading. “We’ve tried to be sensitive about these things,” says Walter Crutchfield, a partner at Vintage Partners. “Sometimes development just comes in and does what it does, taking marching orders from its tenants or investors or banks, and doesn’t take time. We wanted, instead, to do this right.” More often developers and builders have gotten rid of the rodents by shooting or poisoning them, or in some cases even paving over their colonies. But increasingly, notes Mark Conkling, there are “more and more cities that have ordinances saying that if you are going to build on a particular site there are certain precautionary measures you must take.” Conkling is the author of the novel Prairie Dog Blues, a story about an Albuquerque family that is repeatedly frustrated in their attempts to remove prairie dogs from their property and in the process falls under the sway of the personable critters. While doing research for his book, Conkling discovered that the very subject of prairie dogs, at least in the west, can spark dramatically polar views on their worth. “There are ranches where they bait the prairie dogs and kids can learn how to shoot their .22 rifles at them,” says Conkling. “And then there are people who would give up their right arm to save the prairie dogs, they chant and form circles around construction sites and chain themselves to the bull dozers,” he continues. “From the National Rifle Association to the most green person you can imagine, all have relationships with prairie dogs,” Conkling adds. Prairie dog colonies are most common in New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah and represent three species: the white-tailed prairie dog which lives in parts of Colorado; the black-tailed prairie dog in New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado; and the Gunnison prairie dog, in both Arizona and Mexico. They are protected by ordinances in some western locales, such as Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Boulder, although attempts to secure federal protection for them have proved unsuccessful. As a result of the local ordinances prairie dog removal has become a needed business. But the task of catching them is anything but easy, revolving around the animal’s calendar: “Our window is April to September, minus a month and a half when they have babies,” says Botkin of the prairie dogs’ hibernation schedule. “It is really a warm season thing, and if you miss that window, that can really stall out your construction project,” he adds. While many volunteer re-locators use traps to capture and move prairie dogs, Botkin prefers the soapy water flushing method, using a 500-gallon water tank and power generator. The water is saturated with dish soap, which, when pushed by a hose into the animal’s burrow, forces the prairie dog to scamper out. “When it does that, we grab it with either a net or by hand,” says Botkin, adding that he and his workers then towel the animal off. “If one of them is in the soap for longer than usual, we wash their eyes with a saline solution.” But where to transport the animals, after capture, is another challenge. “We prefer to use abandoned colonies that are pretty far out of town, away from future development or conflicts with humans,” says Renn. In 2008 the City of Santa Fe inked an agreement with the Bureau of Land Management to release captured prairie dogs to three area BLM sites. Despite the challenges presented by delaying any work project in order to remove hundreds or even thousands of prairie dogs from a given site, Botkin says the developers and builders he has worked with like what he does. “They appreciate that we stick to their timelines, stick to their costs and just get it done,” Botkin says.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Nov 2014 21:09:39 +0000
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