Coloradans can kill prairie dogs for fun. A wildlife group wants it to stop.

The Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission will decide at its meeting in Fort Morgan next week whether to advance a petition to end the recreational shooting of prairie dogs on public lands. 

Defenders of Wildlife, an animal welfare group based in Washington, D.C., submitted the petition in April, citing concerns over the mass shooting of the loaf-of-bread-size rodents. The group is concerned about scavengers getting lead poisoning from feeding on their bullet-ridden carcasses and point out that Colorado Parks and Wildlife has designated prairie dogs a species of greatest conservation need in its latest State Wildlife Action Plan, approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in January. 

It’s an issue that is widening the divide between hunting and agriculture groups, who want the practice to continue, and wildlife welfare groups, who want it abolished. 

Chamois Anderson, Defenders of Wildlife Rockies and Plains program manager, said the petition seeks to stop the shooting of prairie dogs on public lands including the 200,000-acre Pawnee National Grassland, northeast of Greeley, and the 500,000-acre Cimarron and Comanche National Grassland, which straddles Colorado and Kansas. 

CPW currently enforces a season on public-land prairie dog hunting from June 15 through February. CPW’s response to the petition said “during consultation with the petitioners, they indicated that their intention was to ban all take of prairie dogs on public lands, not just the take via shooting.” 

It does not affect private-land shooting or a county’s authority to kill prairie dogs to address agricultural damage under Colorado revised statutes 33 and 35. 

The stout-bodied rodents are deemed a keystone species by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, because dozens of other wildlife depend on them — most notably the endangered black-footed ferret, in Colorado. 

CPW’s predecessor, the Colorado Division of Wildlife, gave prairie dogs species of greatest conservation status in 2003, because they’re a primary prey not only for ferrets but for golden eagles, ferruginous hawks, badgers, coyotes and swift foxes. They are “ecosystem engineers” — their extensive underground burrows provide vital shelter and nesting space for other wildlife like burrowing owls, mountain plovers and rattlesnakes, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Their digging aerates soil, cycles nutrients and improves water seepage into the ground. 

Dallas May, a CPW commissioner and owner of the May Ranch near Lamar, has been heavily involved in black-footed ferret restoration, which began in 2019 and reached an important milestone when reintroduced ferrets bred and produced two litters of wild-born kits on May’s ranch in 2024. Last week that restoration reached another key milestone, when biologists released the 100th black-footed ferret into a prairie dog colony on May’s ranch. 

But at the September CPW meeting in La Junta, May made clear in his comments that he would not support the petition, because the commission did not allow enough engagement between parties concerned with prairie dogs before two commissioners made a motion to move it into step one of the formal regulatory drafting and review phase of petitions from the originally scheduled Jan. 14-15 meeting at CPW headquarters in Denver to Nov. 4 in Fort Morgan.  

May also said he believes the primary existential threat to prairie dogs is loss of habitat rather than recreational shooting. 

Weighing conservation and agricultural impacts 

Dan Gates, founder of the hunting advocacy group Coloradans for Responsible Wildlife Management and an outspoken opponent of the petition, said on Facebook that the commission “conveniently” scheduled the La Junta meeting for opening day of archery season on Sept. 2, when a large population of hunters would be hunting.

Commissioners Jessica Beaulieu, who represents outdoor recreation and parks, and Rebecca Niemiec, in the at-large seat, pushed to move initial rulemaking to November and the commission voted for it 6-5. 

Jay Tutchton, commission chair, said in a text message that public comments are flooding his inbox “overwhelmingly in favor of the petition/ban” and that he’s “only seen a handful that try to defend the indefensible. But it could be that the prairie dog shooting crowd doesn’t bother to send me their comments.”

Anderson said there are proven nonlethal ways to keep prairie dogs off agricultural lands, including planting densely packed grass walls that form a barrier prairie dogs are scared to pass through for fear of predators. “These tools are already identified in Forest Service prairie dog management plans, providing a way to reduce conflicts with neighboring ranchers and the need for repeated poisoning in buffer management zones on public lands,” she added. 

She also said both Defenders and CPW “spend tremendous resources, dollars and staff time” to kill fleas that spread a plague responsible for mass prairie dog dieoffs, for surveying ferrets and for mapping prairie dog colonies. “And yet a major contradiction is continuing to allow for recreational shooting on on public lands and state lands administered by CPW,” she said, “so, given the new state wildlife action plan, we thought well, this is an easy fix. And that’s why we thought the timing was right to introduce the petition.”  

Lindsey Sterling Krank, senior program director for prairie dog conflict resolution at Humane World for Animals, said “Colorado’s public lands should be places where both wildlife and Coloradans can thrive — not places where a keystone species is treated as a recreational target and where hikers and bird watchers need to watch for flying bullets.” 

Among the opponents are three Cheyenne County commissioners who sent a letter protesting the ban, including fourth-generation rancher and Colorado Cattlemen’s Association board member RJ Jolly, because, Jolly said, what’s really at stake here is personal freedom. 

“The reason we’re opposed to ending the shooting of prairie dogs is there’s a lot of people that don’t like that type of recreation, but there’s a lot of people that do, and (you’d be) shutting them off completely,” he told The Sun.  

The commissioners’ letter also said county commissioners are sometimes called on to deal with “out-of-control prairie dog or rabbit populations and excessive predation or unsafe situations involving predators in our counties.” This should remain a local control situation, it noted, in conjunction with consultation with the local CPW game officer of the affected county. “This is a responsibility of local government and should not be curtailed intentionally or unintentionally by CPW rule making.” 

In its comments to the commission about the petition, CPW said while the agency recognizes prairie dogs as a vital keystone species in grassland ecosystems, it also acknowledges that prairie dogs can have negative economic and operational impacts on private landowners, land managers and agricultural producers. Overlapping legal authorities also govern the conservation and management of the species, it said, requiring the agency to balance the ecological benefits with negative impacts. 

Commissioners will vote on whether to advance the petition to final rulemaking Nov. 4.