Clearing Out Land for Park : Reluctant Executioner Tries to Save Prairie Dogs

Ray Printz is a reluctant executioner with orders to get rid of a colony of prairie dogs making their home on land scheduled to become a park.

“The state says kill them, but I don’t want to,” he said last week.

Officials in Jefferson County, southwest of Denver, want the prairie dogs gone by July from a 220-acre site selected for an athletic complex and amphitheater to be called Clement Park.

Attempt to Move Rodents

Printz, administrator of the county’s Open Space program, said he is trying to move as many of the burrowing rodents as he can to a new habitat elsewhere and permit a small number to stay.

“We’re working with the fish and wildlife people on how to control that colony to a given size,” he said. “We want people to be able to actually observe a real prairie dog colony.”

He admitted that only 30 or 40 of the rodents have been captured in a year of trying. They just have not shown much appetite for the peanut butter, rolled oats, lettuce, apples and other morsels used to bait the traps, Printz said.

State officials put the prairie dogs under a death sentence because they feared that once bulldozers begin clearing the land the uprooted animals would start tearing up the yards of neighbors.

Plan to Use Poison

Meanwhile, Susan Werner, southwest Denver district manager for the state Division of Wildlife, said that when the time comes, the prairie dogs will be poisoned.

Cartridges of poisonous gas will be fired into their burrows. The gas will kill them while the cartridge blocks their escape, she said.

Printz said a friend suggested the extermination would not be so difficult if the rodents were called prairie rats instead of prairie dogs.

“A lot of people consider them to be just rodents,” he said. “But I still think there’s value there.”