Defend the Gunnison 's Prairie Dog : AZ IMC

Arizona Earth First! Call to Action: Defend the Gunnison’s Prairie Dogs

The Gunnison’s Prairie Dog (GPD) is one of five species of prairie dog that inhabit North America. This foot long, golden brown, colonial animal can be found in Arizona’s high deserts and mountain grasslands. The GPD has disappeared from 90% of its historic range across the United States. Of the available/suitable habitat that remains, 30% of it can be found in Arizona. Within the AZ territory only, the GPD has been extirpated from 98% of its former range. Historically, the GPD was found across four million acres in Arizona. Today that area has been drastically reduced to 100,000 acres. These facts strongly suggest that the GPD is treading the path towards extinction.

The dramatic decline of the GPD is due federal and private extermination campaigns, and habitat destruction due to commercial livestock grazing. The plight of the Gunnison’s is a cause for concern for a number of reasons. First, and most obviously, this species is staring into the abyss of extinction. Second, the GPD is a keystone species, providing an ecological function that other species depend on. Gunnison’s Prairie Dogs create networks of burrows that once abandoned, create shelter for a wide array of insects, mammals, birds, and reptiles. The GPD also serves as a prey base for various predators, including the endangered Black-footed Ferret.

Despite all of this the Arizona Game and Fish Department (AGFD) still allows hunting for the Gunnison’s Prairie Dog. This kind of “hunting” by so called “sportsmen”, entails setting up lawn chairs, a table, and a rife, waiting for the Gunnison’s to pock its head above its burrow, and then tarring it apart with high velocity rounds. After a .223 high velocity bullet has hit a prairie dog, there is nothing left to eat or to turn into a trophy. Arizona Earth First! has employed all means available to us to persuade AGFD to recognize what is happening to the Gunnison’s, and act on it. We have written letters, attended public meetings, and personally given public comment before the AGFD Commission, all to no avail. AGFD is stone walling us and the Gunnison’s. Specifically, we have asked for the closure of the GPD season on the Boquillas Ranch (Unit 10), because of the size of the area and its close proximity to the endangered Black-footed Ferret population. Having refused this, AGFD has given us no choice but to expose this “hunt” for the cruel, absurd, blood lust that it is. We will be entering the killing fields on June 16 (opening for prairie dog season) to document the destruction of this ecologically important species. This will be an opportunity to show folks first hand what is happening on the Boquillas Ranch. Join us on the June 16, for the Gunnison’s and the land. Contact us for details at phoenixef@excite.com.

For All Nations Wild and Free
No Compromise, Earth First!

"The dramatic decline of the GPD is due federal and private extermination campaigns, and habitat destruction due to commercial livestock grazing."

The above quote indicates that both reasons originate from commercial livestock. The only people engaging in private (or coercion of federal) extermination pogroms are likely the commercial ranchers..

A compromise solution may benefit everyone in the long term. Restoring native ungulates (hooved mammals) like pronghorn antelope and bighorn sheep would guarantee the prairie dogs an ecosystem undisturbed by intensive livestock and the poisoning/shooting campaign by ranchers..

People who still wish to eat meat occasionally need to be able to hunt, catch and prepare their own animals for personal consumption, not commercial sale. We cannot continue on the path of everconsuming commercial livestock ranching, the long term effects are desertification and riparian ecosystem collapse..

Most other cultures view eating meat as a rare treat, a festival for celebrating the spirit of the animal taken. What led to the near extinction of pronghorn antelope in the past was a few decades of commercial overhunting, not sustenance hunting by indigenous peoples for over ten thousand years..

(As an aside the endangered Sonoran pronghorn antelope and desert bighorn sheep are still not happy about that border/frontera fence preventing their herds from migrating to other food and water sources north or south of the imaginary border line made real by US, complete with barbed wire and trigger happy vigilantes..)