Colorado Horse Rescue Poisons Wildlife
Lethal Policy Reversal Kills Prairie Dogs; Activists Attempt Rescue
Please protest Colorado Horse Rescue’s cruel, senseless
killing of prairie dogs and other animals who share their burrows. Contact CHR
to demand that its current board of directors be dismissed immediately and that
a new board of directors be installed that will guarantee the organization will
not harm wildlife. More information below.
Colorado Horse Rescue
10386 N. 65th St.,
Longmont, CO 80503
tel: 720-494-1414
fax: 720-494-1415
e-mail: info@chr.org
Boulder County Commissioners
P.O. Box 471
Boulder, CO 80306
tel:
(303) 441-3500 fax: (303) 441-4525
Also, please send a letter to the editor to the following
addresses:
Boulder Daily Camera openforum@thedailycamera.com
Boulder Weekly editorial@boulderweekly.com
Longmont Times-Call opinion@times-call.com
And, finally, protest directly to current CHR Board of
Directors member:
Mr. Harvey Yoakum
303-776-2889 or 303-776-1408
On Tuesday, May 8, Colorado Horse Rescue (CHR) stunned
local community members, animal protectionists, and Boulder County officials by
poisoning hundreds of prairie dogs on CHR’s 50-acre site. CHR is a nonprofit group
that rehabilitates neglected and abandoned horses and promotes their adoptions.
A complaint from a whistleblower prompted county zoning inspector Ed Meacham to
visit CHR’s facility, where he immediately ordered contractors to stop poisoning.
Volunteers then spent hours digging out the poisoned burrows, trying to save some
of the animals while CHR staff and volunteers stood by joking. It appears that
no prairie dogs, including this spring’s babies, survived the assault.
The massacre was hideously cruel. Graham Billingsley, director
of the county's Land Use Department, said contractors hired by CHR stuffed the
prairie dog holes with newspaper soaked with poison. The exterminators then packed
the holes with rocks and dirt, trapping the animals underground. The poison, aluminum
phosphide, causes the animals to bleed internally and die in excruciating pain
over the course of several hours, even days, while trapped underground.
CHR received approval from Boulder County to move its operation
to the site on the condition that the land would be revegetated to prevent dust
and soil erosion, conditions worsened by horse grazing. Officials from the Colorado
Division of Wildlife (CDOW) said they believed that the prairie dogs would be
protected on the property. As part of an officially supported revegetation project,
the state spent more than $2,300 reseeding 35 acres with native grasses and trees
last summer. The project was meant to create wildlife habitat for deer, rabbits,
foxes, and prairie dogs. Astonishingly, many of the animals who've been poisoned
over time had been previously relocated on the property in order to make room
for CHR’s new buildings.
CHR officials claim they can not revegetate the property
without killing prairie dogs; however CDOW officials are confident that revegetation
can occur without harming the animals. CHR representatives also claim that horses
can break their legs in prairie dog holes. However, no such case has ever been
documented among grazing horses (i.e., horses who are not being ridden or driven).
The
story was covered by several newspapers, KGNU (Boulder Community Radio -- kgnu.org),
and Denver’s Channel 9.
NEWSPAPER
ACCOUNTS
Not a case of 'either-or'
Boulder Daily Camera Editorial
May 13, 2001
Horses Versus Prairie Dogs
By Chris Barge, Boulder Daily Camera Staff Writer
"Getting rid of prairie dogs" has a different
meaning in some parts of Boulder County than in others.
In Boulder, it means gently moving the black-tailed critters
from one colony to another.
In horse country southwest of Hygiene, it apparently means
poisoning the pests and burying them in their holes.
The difference was made clear this week when a Boulder
County zoning enforcement officer stopped three people in the act of poisoning
and burying a colony of prairie dogs on a 50-acre property operated by the nonprofit
Colorado Horse Rescue.
The officer, Ed Meacham, was sent to the property Tuesday
afternoon after neighbors called Boulder County Commissioner Ron Stewart to complain
about the exterminations.
Meacham said the two men and the woman who were there were
armed with shovels and a can he presumed to be filled with poison.
"I walked into the field and asked them what they
were doing and they said, 'We're killing prairie dogs,' and I told them to stop
that," Meacham said.
Two neighbors who live across the street from the Horse
Rescue property said Friday that they also witnessed the three people killing
prairie dogs.
Graham Billingsly, county Land Use Department director,
said Colorado Horse Rescue in 1999 agreed to relocate a colony of prairie dogs
without killing them in exchange for permission to operate on the land. He said
the commitment had "the force of regulation," even though prairie dogs
are pests under state law and it is legal to kill them on private property.
Horse Rescue spokeswoman Penny Storchevoy said she did
not know about the incident. The group's barn manager, Nan Millett, said the organization
had "gone by every rule that's been put down in front of us."
Depending on who is talking, the incident was either the
result of blatant disregard for the county's rules or the result of a genuine
misunderstanding.
The county in 1999 ordered Horse Rescue to revegetate the
dry, weed-infested land with native grasses and plants to prevent dust and erosion.
Millett said revegetating the land while protecting prairie dogs was difficult
because the rodents ate the grass seed.
"It failed miserably," said Rob Alexander, a
county Parks and Open Space Department employee who was asked by Commissioner
Stewart in 1999 to head an advisory committee to help with the revegetation effort.
At the property Friday, hundreds of prairie dogs scurried
back and forth among their holes, sometimes between the hoofs of horses.
Alexander said Horse Rescue board members Jay Hearst and
Harvey Yoakum told him in January that they were going to "get rid of the
prairie dogs."
"It was clear to me they were going to exterminate
them rather than remove them," Alexander said.
Alexander said he was not aware at the time that the company
had committed to not killing prairie dogs. He said he neither advised them to
stop nor to go forward with their plans to exterminate.
County zoning enforcement officer Meacham said that when
he stopped the prairie-dog killings in progress Tuesday, the workers called Yoakum
on a cellular telephone from the field and asked him to speak with Meacham. Yoakum
told him that "somebody at Parks and Open Space" had approved the extermination,
Meacham said.
Hearst and Yoakum were unavailable for comment Friday.
Hearst resigned from the board May 1, and Yoakum joined
the board early this year, Alexander said. Both worked with Alexander as liaisons
to the revegetation advisory committee for the horse rescue group.
Storchevoy, a board member as well as a spokeswoman for
the group, said Horse Rescue tries to avoid conflicts with wildlife.
She said she did not hear of the allegations of poisoning
until after animal-rights activists, including some from Rocky Mountain Animal
Defense, spent four hours Tuesday night pulling poison-soaked newspapers out of
prairie dog burrows.
The activists were eventually ordered to leave by the Sheriff's
Office.
The horse rescue group had asked the state Division of
Wildlife for help to move the prairie dogs under the division's Cooperative Habitat
Program.
The division spent $2,385 to create a habitat for the prairie
dogs and other wildlife on 35 acres of the rescue group's property, plus more
for labor and equipment, division spokesman Todd Malmsbury said.
Wildlife manager Katie Kinney said the rescue group might
be asked to reimburse the state for those costs.
"There was no point in planting the habitat if they
were going to kill the wildlife," Kinney said.
Susan Miller of Wild Places, an organization that relocates
prairie dogs, said the horse rescue group should be held accountable for violating
an agreement with the county and with all the people that worked hard to relocate
the prairie dogs there.
"Basically what they did was dotted all their 'i's
and crossed all their 't's and then went ahead and snubbed their nose at everybody
and killed all the prairie dogs," Miller said.
But neighbor Suzanne Anderson, who volunteers with the
horse rescue group to help save abused and abandoned horses, said she condoned
the prairie dog killings because the "rodents" were taking over the
pasture.
Colorado Horse Rescue provides shelter, care, rehabilitation
and adoption services for abused, abandoned, neglected and unwanted horses.
"When it comes down to saving a horse or a prairie
dog, I will save the horse," Anderson said.
May 10, 2001
Prairie Dogs May Be Trouble for CHR
Eric Frankowski, Longmont Daily Times-Call
HYGIENE - County officials are looking into an incident
in which the nonprofit group Colorado Horse Rescue poisoned up to several hundred
prairie dogs, and in the act may have violated its development permit.
On Tuesday, after a neighbor of the horse-rehabilitation
center and shelter phoned in a complaint, county zoning inspector Ed Meacham visited
the facility south of Hygiene and told contractors who were gassing a prairie
dog colony to cease their operations.
Conservationists and animal rights activists, about 20
of whom converged on CHR's 50-acre property to protest the extermination, staunchly
defend prairie dogs as a keystone species in prairie ecosystems, but under state
law, the animals are considered rodent pests and it is legal to kill them on private
property.
However, Tuesday's action by CHR may have violated conditions
put on it in September 1999, when the group received approval to move its operations
to the property on 65th Street.
According to county spokesman Jim Burrus, as part of CHR's
land-use approval, the county told the group it had to revegetate the dry, weed-infested
land with native grasses and plants to prevent continued dust and erosion, and
that it must move a resident prairie dog colony from 8 acres where a barn, arena,
corrals, offices and other buildings were planned on the southern end of the site.
"As a general policy, Boulder County does not condone
the extermination of prairie dogs and, when site-plan review opportunities present
themselves, attempts to compel landowners to preserve these important links in
the food chain," Burrus said. "This was the case with Colorado Horse
Rescue."
He said the county made it clear at a Sept. 9, 1999, hearing
"that Colorado Horse Rescue was allowed to relocate those prairie dogs to
another part of their property, but not off the property."
However, whether Tuesday's poisonings violate the letter
of the county permit to develop the shelter is still unanswered.
"That's a possibility," Burrus said. "It's
something we're looking into."
Following Tuesday's incident, CHR barn manager Nan Millett
said the organization had complied with all county requirements.
"We've gone by every rule that's been put down in
front of us," she said.
Millett also said CHR hired Boulder-based Wild Places to
relocate the prairie dogs last summer, but that revegetating the land and trying
to protect the animals at the same time was difficult because they eat the seed
and prevent the land from being irrigated.
The county responded by saying that if there was a problem
complying with the county-approved revegetation plan, Colorado Horse Rescue should
have contacted officials to discuss the problem.
"They're saying the county is responsible because
we required them to revegetate an area where the prairie dogs were," Burrus
said. "But we told them they should relocate the animals before they did
the revegetation.
"In no way, shape or form did we allude to them that
they should exterminate the prairie dogs," he said.
The county may not be the only bureaucracy interested in
the case. CHR also may be in at least luke-warm water with the Colorado Division
of Wildlife.
As part of the county's conditions requiring habitat improvement,
the group asked the state wildlife agency for help under the auspices of its Cooperative
Habitat Program.
The DOW spent $2,385 on materials for the project plus
an unknown amount on labor and equipment, spokesman Todd Malmsbury said.
"We went out there and planted native grasses and
tress last year to create habitat so the prairie dogs and horses could both live
together," said area wildlife manager Katie Kinney, who worked on the project.
The DOW's participation in the revegetation plan, Kinney
said, was entirely contingent on the benefit to prairie dogs.
"There was no point in planting the habitat if they
were going to kill the wildlife," she said. "We were planting it for
prairie dogs. We're a wildlife agency. We don't go in to plant for horses.
"If they killed the prairie dogs, then the habitat
we planted doesn't benefit wildlife."
Because of poor precipitation in 2000, Kinney said, the
habitat improvements were not as successful as hoped, but regardless of the outcome,
"the money was still spent on the project."
Before determining what to do next, she said she wanted
to re-examine the contract with Colorado Horse Rescue, but added that a likely
course of action would be to seek recompensation from the organization for the
DOW's costs because of failure to meet the habitat obligations.
Penny Storchevoy, a member of CHR's board of directors,
said she was not aware of any problems with the DOW, and that as far as she knew
the organization had complied with the county's directives.
"Why incite a controversy where there is not one?"
she asked.
"All I know is that a group of people were trespassing
on CHR property last night, and they made verbal threats," she said of the
activists. "The sheriff was called, and they were asked to leave."
May 10, 2001
Agency Accused of Prairie Dog Abuse
By Beth Wohlberg, Boulder Daily Camera Staff Writer
Boulder County blamed Colorado Horse Rescue on Wednesday
for poisoning prairie dogs on the nonprofit's 50-acre site off 65th Street near
Nelson Road in Hygiene.
On Tuesday, a zoning enforcement officer halted workers
in the middle of killing the animals, said Graham Billingsley, director of the
county's Land Use Department. Billingsley said workers hired by Horse Rescue,
had been stuffing prairie dog holes with newspaper soaked in a gas that causes
the rodents to bleed internally and explode.
"This was certainly not in keeping with the approval
given to their location," said Boulder County Commissioner Ron Stewart. "It's
not that the prairie dogs would have to be where they are." He said Colorado
Horse Rescue had previously made a commitment to relocate the animals.
The county approved the group's move to the Hygiene site
on the condition that the land would be revegetated to prevent dust and soil erosion,
particularly because horse grazing can make those problems worse. The operation
takes in neglected or abandoned horses in an effort to rehabilitate them and place
them in good homes.
If prairie dogs interfered with revegetation, county officials
said, they expected the organization's managers to arrange for relocation.
Colorado Division of Wildlife officials said they were
under the impression that prairie dogs would be protected on the property. Last
summer, as part of an officially supported revegetation project, the state spent
more than $2,300 reseeding 35 acres with native grasses and trees.
The project was intended to create upland wildlife habitat
for species such as deer, rabbits and prairie dogs, said Todd Malmsbury of the
Division of Wildlife.
"The reason we did the work was because prairie dogs
and other species were out there," said Katie Kinney, an area wildlife manager
for the division. "We would not have done this if we knew they would poison
prairie dogs. We are not in the business of providing habitat for domestic animals."
Penny Storchevoy, public relations coordinator of Colorado
Horse Rescue, said she doesn't know anything about the poisoning. She said the
organization has taken steps to avoid any conflicts with wildlife, including relocating
prairie dogs from one area of their land to another for construction.
She said she was only aware of the allegations of poisoning,
which were made by animal rights activists who spent four hours Tuesday night
uncovering prairie dog burrows and pulling poison-soaked newspaper out of the
holes.
“We're taking Colorado Horse Rescue to task," said
Dave Crawford of Boulder's Rocky Mountain Animal Defense. "If these guys
wanted to live in a sterile environment, they shouldn't have moved to the country."
May
9, 2001
Prairie
Dogs Reportedly Poisoned
Joe
Hanel, Longmont Daily Times-Call
HYGIENE — Hundreds of prairie dogs in a pasture at Colorado Horse
Rescue apparently have been poisoned, activists say.
About 20 people from Rocky Mountain Animal Defense and other groups
descended on the 50-acre property on 65th Street on Tuesday afternoon after a
neighbor called to say prairie dogs were being gassed.
"These people know better," said David Crawford, executive
director of RMAD. "This casts a very dark shadow on the work that they do.
They can't call themselves animal-friendly at this point."
Aluminum phosphide is commonly used to kill prairie dogs. Newspapers
soaked in the poison are stuffed into the burrows. It "causes a slow, agonizing
death in which the prairie dogs bleed internally and literally explode,"
RMAD's Jill Bielawski said.
Crumpled newspapers littered the ground on the horse rescue property
Tuesday evening.
The activists entered the field to dig out the newspapers and look
for sick prairie dogs. They didn't find any — living or dead.
CHR employees and volunteers said the activists were trespassing
and insulting. They called sheriff's deputies to the scene after one woman threatened
to vandalize the property, they said.
No one was arrested or ticketed, according to Sheriff's Deputy Kris
Jakobsson. Two deputies stayed on the property until the activists left and took
the names of everyone who was trespassing.
The prairie dog problem has vexed Colorado Horse Rescue — which takes
in and rehabilitates unwanted horses — since it moved to the property last year.
"When we purchased the land, we were told two things needed
to be done," said Nan Millett, the barn manger for CHR, who lives on the
property. "One is to plant vegetation, and the other is to relocate (or)
cohabitate with the prairie dogs here."
But relocating the prairie dogs proved difficult. CHR hired Wild
Places to move some of the dogs last summer, but thousands remain, Millett said.
Susan Miller of Wild Places relocated some prairie dogs to a parcel
of the CHR property last summer. She returned Tuesday to dig newspapers out of
the burrows — some of them the same she had moved the dogs to last year.
"There's no point to putting the dogs through all this trauma,
hiring a company to do this, and then poisoning them," she said.
Amid the tension, CHR representatives think they have found a solution.
One of their volunteers offered Tuesday evening to relocate the remaining dogs
at no cost, without killing them, Millett said.
CHR's 50 acres are mostly dirt, scattered with tiny weeds and prairie
dog burrows.
It's essential that the property be revegetated, County Commissioner
Ron Stewart said.
"If there isn't vegetation on it, it just blows away,"
Stewart said. He said the denuded field also invites weeds.
Stewart said he heard of the poisoning Tuesday afternoon when a neighbor
called.
"We actually have a condition that says they should relocate
(the prairie dogs)," Stewart said.
Millett said the horse rescue has complied with its agreement with
the county.
"We've gone by every rule that's been put down in front of us,"
she said.
Revegetating the land while saving the prairie dogs is very difficult,
Millett said. The prairie dogs eat the grass seed, and the field can't be irrigated
while the dogs are in it.
"I once stayed up 24 hours to take care of a sick horse,"
she said. "I know what it is like to take care of an animal that can't take
care of itself.
"We're not the bad guys here. We're trying not to be."
Joe
Hanel can be reached at 303-776-2244, Ext. 228, or by e-mail at jhanel@times-call.com
Animal
advocates at war
Horse
rescuers poison prairie dogs; state official “disturbed”
by
Staff, Boulder Weekly
HYGIENE-Two
animal rescue groups are at war after Colorado Horse Rescue poisoned hundreds
of prairie dogs on a 50-acre pasture on North 65th Street Tuesday, May 8.
Employees
and volunteers with the Rocky Mountain Animal Defense Fund raced to the scene
and worked desperately to dig poison-soaked newspapers out of some 200 prairie
dog boroughs. They arrived between four to seven hours after poison was placed
in the holes, and it's not known whether any animals were saved.
"They
(Colorado Horse Rescue) apparently have even poisoned some of the very prairie
dogs that they had relocated to a prairie dog preserve on the property,"
says Jill Bielawski, media coordinator for the animal defense fund.
Katie
Kinney, area wildlife manager for the Colorado Department of Wildlife, says it
appears Colorado Horse Rescue violated a contract involving a habitat improvement
grant. She said the state will likely seek return of thousands of dollars given
to the organization to save prairie dogs.
"I'm
disturbed by this," Kinney says. "We had a contract with them, entered
into under the direction of Boulder County Commissioners just last year, and I
believe it has been violated."
Horse
rescue officials said the prairie dog rescuers were trespassing Tuesday, and they
summoned Boulder County Sheriff's deputies to the scene. Nobody was arrested or
cited.
Penny
Storchevoy, vice president of Colorado Horse Rescue's board of directors, said
prairie dogs have been killed on the property because Boulder County officials
ordered the organization to revegitate it. She said decisions pertaining to revegetation
were made by a committee appointed jointly by Colorado Horse Rescue and the Boulder
County Commission.
While
digging up newspapers, soaked with deadly aluminum phosphide, Bielawski expressed
anger and said poisoning prairie dogs is inhumane and cruel.
"It's
terrible how these poor animals die, bleeding to death internally," Bielawski
said, stuffing handfuls of poisoned newspapers into a sack.
Dave
Crawford, executive director of the Rocky Mountain Animal Defense Fund, yelled
at horse rescuers as he ran into the pasture with his shovel.
"You're
in violation of Amendment 14," Crawford shouted. "You people are in
deep shit! We had an agreement, and you broke it!"
Amendment
14 refers to a portion of the Colorado Constitution that protects some small wildlife
species, such as Cottontail Rabbits and various snakes. Earlier this year Boulder
County District Judge Frank Dubosky granted an injunction to temporarily halt
a mass prairie dog poisoning because he was convinced that animals protected under
Amendment 14 sometimes live in prairie dog holes and are inadvertently killed
by aluminum phosphide.
The
"agreement" Crawford spoke of involves a prairie dog relocation permit
the horse rescue group obtained last year in order to build a horse barn and corrals
on part of the property. Working with the Colorado Department of Wildlife and
Boulder County, the horse rescue group agreed to relocate all prairie dogs that
lived on the building site to the southeast corner of the property.
"It
was obvious that they have been poisoning prairie dogs for quite some time,"
says Susan Miller, director of The Wild Places, a Boulder-based organization dedicated
to saving prairie dogs. "In the area that had been successfully established
as a relocation site, there were no prairie dogs. All of the burrows were plugged
with rocks, and they had placed corrals out there. Obviously, they just wanted
to placate the public and the Department of Wildlife, get their building up, and
then do whatever they wanted."
Horse
Rescue officials at the scene said the county's order to revegetate make it necessary
to kill prairie dogs. They said prairie dogs eat new grass, making it difficult
to establish thick vegetation.
"I'm
beyond being upset," Miller says. "They completely reneged. They completely
violated their permit. Had we known they were going to kill all of these dogs,
we would not have gone through the whole process of a relocation."
Storchevoy
says Colorado Horse Rescue could decide to press trespassing charges against the
prairie dog rescuers.
"At
this point we have no plans to pursue that," Storchevoy said.