OPINION:
Prairie dogs, with more important things to do, don’t engage in interstate commerce. That was the finding of a federal judge last week in a decision that could unravel the Endangered Species Act and restore a little respect for private property.
Federal law declares Utah prairie dogs a “threatened” species, and this imposes severe restrictions on the use of private property wherever these critters, more rat than dog, are found.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Property Owners and the Pacific Legal Foundation sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Agency to prevent invocation of the Commerce Clause as a tool to require residents to jump through hoops to get prairie dogs out of (and out from under) their fields and lawns.
Residents of southern Utah have been fighting for the right to trap, redirect or kill these pests to get rid of them. The destructive gopher that wrecked golf greens in the movie “Caddyshack” has nothing on the Utah varmint. Damage done to crops by the prairie dogs in southern Utah is estimated to be well into the millions of dollars annually. They burrow underground, creating holes that break farm equipment and injure cattle.
Cemeteries in Cedar City and Paragonah are so overrun with the critters that headstones are tumbling into their tunnels. According to the lawsuit, “The Utah prairie dog threatens the peaceful operation of the [Cedar City Cemetery] and the sanctity of the grave sites.” A funeral service was interrupted recently by a prairie dog scampering through the service, barking loudly and incessantly. “This disturbance caused great stress to the unfortunate widow.”
The federal government seems to have more concern for the well-being of the prairie dogs than for human people. The Fish and Wildlife Service insists that it has right to regulate animals on private land because they’re part of the ecosystem, and a healthy ecosystem facilitates commerce. U.S. District Court Judge Dee Benson found that a stretch.
“If Congress could use the Commerce Clause to regulate anything that might affect the ecosystem (to say nothing about its effect on commerce),” she ruled, “there would be no logical stopping point to congressional power under the Commerce Clause.” Rodents they may be, but Utah’s aggressive and industrious prairie dogs have dug a hole in the favorite liberal tool for encroaching private-property rights.
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