Imperiled prairie dog tests tempers in southern Utah

CEDAR CITY — Duffers beware: The sixth hole at the sun-baked Cedar Ridge Golf Course is a doozy.

You may be chipping over about 50 mounds of red dirt in the fairway and negotiating dozens of Utah prairie dogs frolicking on the clipped green grass like preteens at a slumber party.

Balls sometimes bonk them on the head or vanish into an underground burrow. Mostly, the prairie dogs ruin the fairways, munch the greens like salad and chew up the sprinkler system.

"It drives us nuts," said John Evans, director of golf at the Cedar City-run course where prairie dogs have infiltrated 13 of 18 holes and the driving range. "They used to let us just shoot 'em."

But when it comes to Utah prairie dogs — once considered a scourge worthy only of a bullet or dose of poison — nothing is as easy as it used to be.

Ever since they were protected by the Endangered Species Act in 1973, tensions have simmered in southern Utah over how much humans should yield in the name of saving this cinnamon-colored rodent.

"They're pretty cute little critters. I can see where people like them," said Wayne Smith, a commissioner in Iron County, long a stronghold for prairie dogs. "I don't dislike them, I just dislike the problems they cause us."

Many locals — a few of whom still resort to illegal killing — remain irritated that the prairie dogs have torn up the golf course and blame them for stifling economic development and infringing on private property rights.

Environmentalists fight back, saying government efforts to recover the species have been halfhearted and too tolerant of policies, including allowing some of the animals to be shot legally, that harm a key species for southern Utah ecosystems.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, too, acknowledges that something has to change. The agency is now reworking its management plan for the species, placing an increased emphasis on preserving the prairie dogs on private land and less on efforts to relocate them to public lands.

A draft is expected to be sent out for public review this summer.

Part of the ongoing challenge is that 70 percent of the prairie dogs live on private land and prefer the same grassy valleys also popular for homes, farms, commercial developments, roads and schools. Iron County has more than doubled its population since 1990.