I'm From the Government, And I'm Here to Help You

The title is what Ronald Reagan referred to as the most terrifying words in the English language. The Lord of Truth fills us in on an example I'll call the attack of the Prairie Dogs...

Jerry Heinrichs says that because of the long-running drought across the West, his cattle had to compete with prairie dogs for the grass. And the prairie dogs won.

Across his ranch and other swaths of both private and government-owned grassland in southwestern South Dakota, about 50 miles east of Mount Rushmore, little remains but bare dirt, stones, prairie dog mounds and the burrowing rodents that live under them.

Heinrichs mostly blames the federal government, which for more than four years stopped poisoning prairie dogs while it decided whether the critters regarded by ranchers as a nuisance deserved to be protected under the Endangered Species Act.

"The worst enemy we've got right now is our own government," Heinrichs said. "Doing nothing, it's created havoc down here."

The dispute has illustrated the wide canyon between ranchers and environmentalists and the difficulty the government has in trying to satisfy both sides while carrying out the Endangered Species Act.

Conservationists petitioned the government in 1998 to protect the black-tailed prairie dog, arguing that the rodent is slipping toward extinction because of plague and the disappearance of open spaces across the West.

In 2000, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued an initial finding that prairie dogs may be in trouble. Ultimately, in 2004, the agency decided not to extend protection to the animal. But while it was making its up mind, the U.S. Forest Service was not allowed to poison prairie dogs on government land.

Ranchers say that the pests soon invaded their ranches. The landowners were free to poison prairie dogs on their own property, but they say there was no point in doing that, because the animals would have quickly returned from government land.

The prairie dogs ate all the grass, devoured prickly pear cactus and dug down to get plant roots. They apparently even began to eat their young, said Don Bright, Forest Service supervisor in Chadron, Nebraska.

Eating their own young... wouldn't that control the problem by itself?