Earth First! Activists banned in Northern Arizona
by Chuk'shon and Phoenix EF! Friday, Jun. 17, 2005 at 7:55 PM

On the opening day of Arizona’s Gunnison’s prairie dog hunt, five members of a Chuk’shon Earth First! and Phoenix Earth First! film crew were banned from the hunt area, after the Arizona Game and Fish Department (AZGFD) discovered that the environmentalists were documenting the recreational shooting of three-month-old Gunnison’s prairie dogs.

Contact: Rod Coronado, Chuk’shon Earth First! — (520) 240-2490
6/17/05
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
EARTH FIRST! ACTIVISTS BANNED IN NORTHERN ARIZONA

On the opening day of Arizona’s Gunnison’s prairie dog hunt, five members of a Chuk’shon Earth First! and Phoenix Earth First! film crew were banned from the hunt area, after the Arizona Game and Fish Department (AZGFD) discovered that the environmentalists were documenting the recreational shooting of three-month-old Gunnison’s prairie dogs. Each year, sport hunters shoot 45,000 Gunnison’s prairie dogs, sometimes from lawn chairs, despite efforts to reintroduce the endangered black-footed
ferret into the region. Gunnison’s prairie dogs are the primary prey for Arizona’s reintroduced black-footed ferrets. The US Fish and Wildlife Service’s (USFWS) Black-Footed Ferret Recovery Project has as its goal the successful reintroduction of 10 separate
populations of black-footed ferret by 2010. Gunnison’s prairie dogs are also the subjects of a petition for Endangered Species Act (ESA) protection.

“Black-footed ferrets need large, healthy populations of prairie dogs in order to survive. By allowing prairie dog hunting, Game and Fish is endangering the federal ferret reintroduction program,” said Rod Coronado of Earth First!

On the morning of June 16, an Earth First! film crew began interviewing Gunnison’ s prairie dog hunters as part of an investigation for a documentary critical of AZGFD’s nine-
month Gunnison’s prairie dog hunting season. After interviewing an AZGFD official and a prairie dog hunter on camera, the film crew was notified by AZGFD agents that they were being permanently banned from the Navajo Nation’s 750,000-acre Boquillas Ranch
by the lessee. When the film crew asked if it had violated any laws, AZGFD stated that no one was being accused of any illegal activity.
“Game and Fish’s policy on Gunnison’s prairie dogs serves only those who enjoy killing them, not the majority of Arizona’s citizens, who want to see wildlife preserved from recreational shooting. It’s ironic that the only people being banned from the Boquillas
Ranch are the ones who aren’t killing any animals,” said Coronado.

Earth First! is calling for a moratorium on Gunnison’s prairie dog hunting until a ruling can be made on the species’ ESA listing, and until the USFWS Black-Footed Ferret Recovery Team’s mission has been met.

Video documentation available on request.

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