Wildlife closes in on grade school

Solution sought to prairie dog problem

Berny Morson, Rocky Mountain News

Published April 24, 2006 at midnight

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LOUISVILLE - Prairie dogs - and little pellets of their poop - are just a basketball-bounce away from kindergartners on the Monarch K-8 school playground.

"Their feces are two inches from where the kids are playing hopscotch and basketball, and when a ball goes in that direction, the children do run after it," said Heidi Bolles, whose daughter is among the kindergartners.

Despite five years of control efforts by the Boulder Valley School District, prairie dogs are popping out of the ground all around Monarch.

They are poking through the eighth-grade playing field, and their poop is thick in the area where children wait for the school bus.

"They have circled, and they are now closing in," said kindergarten teacher Alison Adams. "It's not looking good."

But while parents and teachers say the rodents must go, members of Boulder County's large animal-rights community say the critters aren't necessarily the problem.

"There's a conflict there between the people who use the school and the wildlife," said David Crawford of Rocky Mountain Animal Defense. "I wouldn't call it a prairie dog problem."

Parents, teachers and animal rights activists vow to be out in numbers Tuesday night when the school board decides what to do about prairie dogs at Monarch and two other schools.

Alternatives include relocating the animals or killing them. A barrier will halt new migrations from adjoining land.

No one wants them

Joseph Sleeper, the school district's director of operational services, said that relocation is preferable to killing the prairie dogs. But no one wants them.

Prairie dogs used to be welcome on the city of Boulder's 70,000-acre greenbelt. Now the greenbelt is overrun, and farmers are complaining about prairie dog migration to their land.

"Even the advocate groups we've been working with acknowledge that there are no relocation sites currently," Sleeper said.

If the prairie dogs must be killed, they will be caught in live traps and put to death humanely, not poisoned, he said.

Prairie dogs also infest the grounds at Sanchez Elementary School in Lafayette and Nevin Platt Middle School in unincorporated Boulder County.

But they are most numerous at Monarch, which between 85 and 100 prairie dogs call home, according to a study commissioned by the school district. Students are allowed only on the blacktop part of the playground or an area covered with gravel, said Adams, the kindergarten teacher.

Adams said she washes the children's shoes with bleach if they chase the ball into what she calls "prairie dog land."

"When we had one (prairie dog) die, it was right under the swing set - right there," Adams said, pointing to the spot.

In that incident last year, the prairie dog was in its final throes as the kids came out to play.

"They were horrified," Adams said. "They were asking what it was, and we were saying, 'Sadly it's probably ill,' and you're trying to make it as light as you can."

A janitor removed the dead animal. Tests showed no diseases.

Prairie dogs carry disease

During fire drills, students must assemble on grassy areas dotted with holes.

"There are plenty of mounds the children walk on top of to get to their safety spots, and half of them are wearing flip flops or the Crocs that they wear nowadays," said Bolles, the parent.

Prairie dogs carry bubonic plague and other diseases.

"The chances are low of getting it (plague), but if they do get it, it's extremely serious," said Bolles, who worked in industrial health and risk assessment.

Monarch's struggle with prairie dogs has gone on for about five years.

The district trapped prairie dogs at Monarch in 2002 and 2003 with the help of volunteers. The animals were shipped to Boulder open space.

But some prairie dogs were left behind, and more rodents migrated from surrounding private land, said Sleeper, the operations director.

"You can see the moonscape over there," he said, pointing to property across the street from Monarch where prairie dogs live.

Last June, the district began building a barrier around the kindergarten playground. But prairie dogs were infiltrating even as the barrier was going up, Sleeper said.

"We were in a race with them, and they beat us," Sleeper said.

The wave of prairie dog migration is heading toward Monarch High School, which shares a 70-acre campus with the K-8 school, Sleeper said.

Crawford, the animal rights activist, agreed the prairie dogs should be moved.

"We do think they (prairie dogs) should be away from playing fields, not only for the well-being of our youth, but also for the well-being of the animals," Crawford said.

He said the school district should make an exhaustive effort to find a place to put the prairie dogs, even if landowners must be paid to accept them.

"We would very strenuously object if they were to kill them," Crawford said.

Sleeper said the district's top priority is the safety of the children.

"This is not a wildlife sanctuary," he said.

Prairie dog meeting

• What: Boulder Valley School District school board will discuss the growing prairie dog population at three schools.

• When: 6:30 p.m. Tuesday

• Where: School district headquarters, 6500 Arapahoe Road

morsonb@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5209

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