Prairie Dogs in the Great Plains

Here is a letter I wrote to my lawmakers about the EPA's recent efforts to approve poisons that will kill prairie dogs in the Great Plains by causing them to slowly and painfully bleed to death. It's time we started caring.....

The first paragraph and last line were composed by Defenders of Wildlife, the rest is mine:

As someone who cares about wildlife and environmental health, I'm writing to strongly oppose the Environmental Protection Agency's efforts to register Kaput-D for use in eradicating prairie dogs in ten states across the Great Plains. The Environmental Protection Agency should not approve Kaput-D, and should immediately rescind its May 2009 approval of Rozol, a similar poison used to kill prairie dogs.

I remember feeding prairie dogs on a trip to the Great Plains many years ago; they were a major draw for visitors in the Badlands, and, like the bison, are a part of the landscape. That experience stands out to me as one of the great experiences of my life, and a moment when I felt humble and grateful to live in this land. I cannot imagine supporting anything that would so ruthlessly and carelessly destroy these animals, and I cannot imagine the Great Plains without prairie dogs.

It's time we stopped believing that we can poison our way out of our problems. It's time we stopped thinking that we can continue to engage in the destructive habits that we engage in and then simply apply a chemical to repair the damage. And it's time we stopped looking upon every other living thing in this world as a nuisance that is in our way and needs to be destroyed.

How long can this go on? Seriously. How many species do we have to obliterate before we are comfortable enough? How much violence will we heap upon other creatures before we realize that we cannot harm them without also harming ourselves?

We are subject to natural laws that are unchanging, and we are playing Russian roulette with things that we don't understand nearly as much as we think we do.

They are not just a bunch of stupid animals. They matter, and their fate is tied with ours, whether we recognize it or not.

Americans care about wildlife in America. We do not want to see them poisoned at all, and we especially do not want to see them subject to the slow and painful deaths associated with these chemicals.

Please withdraw the efforts to use these biocides on our prairie dogs.

Thank you for considering my views on this urgent matter. I look forward to your reply.

Sharyn Beach