Prairie Dogs: A Modern Day Plague :: Free Argumentative Essays

Prairie Dogs ? A Modern Day Plague Almost Every Morning on the plains of eastern Colorado, rancher Ken Holmes squints through a riflescope and sights in on a fat, little prairie dog. At the blink of an eye, he pulls the trigger and a hollow-tipped slug erupts from the barrel. Two hundred yards later, the slug explodes in the prairie dog scattering its ravaged flesh across the plains. Some people say that this is a horrible act, but for ranchers like Ken Holmes, it's away to save his grazing fields. The prairie dog is a controversial animal because many people perceive them to be a prolific nuisance. Shooting and poisoning has reduced an extremely large population, which once covered most of the western U.S. and northern Mexico. In Texas, the historic population at the turn of the century in 1900 was estimated to be approximately 5.5 billion animals. Today, numbers of prairie dogs in Texas are estimated at only 300,000 (cdri). Maybe if these numbers keep decreasing at such an alarming rate, the prairie dog problem may actually come to an end. So no local, state, or federal government should try to bring these numbers up. This animal digs gigantic burrows, and makes extensive tunnels underneath the Earth's surface (bitterroot). This natural act the prairie dog makes kills grass and destroys fields taking away feed for cattle and crops for food. Many scientists believe that this act is a natural fertilizer, giving nutrients back to the soil (National Geographic p.116). If this natural act is a fertilizer, then why are many ranchers and farmers faced with a loss of money. Usually due to the fact that these burrows take up a wide range of they're fields making it difficult to grow and raise anything for a profit. Also, if this fertilizing act actually fertilizes the land, then why is it that they seem to destroy a field rather than help it? Rather than try to shoot them or poison them, some have tried to set aside protected areas, and relocate the prairie dogs. In Boulder, Colorado, approximately 20,000 feet of visual barrier was installed along boundaries of these protected areas. The cost of that was $23,000, but that figure represents only enough to cover about 7.5% of the perimeter surrounding the area. It would require an additional $242,350 to finish that barrier. Instead of this expensive barrier, relocating them was the second option. In order to do this, it would cost upwards of $100,000 just to move them somewhere else (ci boulder). That is a lot of money to be throwing around on an animal that not many people like. If people were going to