Rose Mary Allmendinger has more on her mind than rising fuel costs and banks getting into real estate. She's a working rancher as well as a Realtor, and she says that environmentalist are putting jumping mice and prairie dogs over the needs of people. Have the environmental movement gone too far?

Allmendinger is upset that the Colorado Department of Transportation is culling $5 million from public monies to buy prime grazing properties and turn them into prairie dog habitats. It's not that Allmendinger doesn't want the little critters to have a home, she wonders why highway dollars aren't being spent on more urgent public safety issues, like preventing highway deaths.

"Transportation routes and the improvements along the Front Range of the State of Colorado are the biggest concerns of Colorado residents," complains Allmendinger.

"For instance, just north of Colorado Springs we have a state highway with an intersection so notorious for killing people that it has been labeled "Bloody 83," she explains. "Neither the state nor the county can correct those inherent defects in the traffic patterns because the land is dedicated to the Preble Jumping Mouse habitat!" In order to satisfy the requirements for disturbing that "habitat" it can literally take years to get all the bureaucratic approvals needed to do so

"In the meantime, people are dying like flies out there, fatal accident after fatal accident," she says.

Allmendinger, along with other ranchers, worries that environmentalists are becoming too powerful, bypassing human needs for some animals that aren't even on the endangered species list. "The U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service has earmarked an entire part of El Paso County as a mouse habitat, reserving over 140 acres per mouse," says Allmendinger. "Think about this - in the state of Colorado, it is an accepted "rule of thumb" that it takes 40 acres of unirrigated short-grass land to support one cow and her calf. Why does a mouse need 140 acres? It's ludicrous!"

The prairie dog protection agreement that has Allmendinger coming out of her burrow to complain about, according to a report, is between the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT), The Nature Conservancy of Colorado, Federal Highway Administration, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Colorado Division of Wildlife. CDOT is budgeting the money for the purchase of short-grass prairie habitat in eastern Colorado, and plans to evaluate other sites in the coming months.

A study completed last year by the Colorado Department of Natural Resources indicated that disease and urban development are threats to prairie dog populations which are larger than previously believed. (DNR), sylvatic plague and urban development were cited as the primary threats to prairie dog populations.

But, the study also found that across approximately 214,000 acres east of the Continental Divide, there are nearly 2,600 active prairie dog colonies in eastern Colorado, the largest of which covers more than 4,100 acres.

"The prairie dog is hardly being threatened," says Allmendinger. "That story becomes more vivid when you look at the numbers of prairie dogs throughout all states in the West."

Allmendinger isn't the only one upset. The Colorado Cattlemen's Association says it was neither contacted for consultation nor advised of these plans for land that is primarily owned by cattleman.

"I have contacted both my State Senator, my State Representative, and my U.S. Senator," says Allmendinger. "To date I have only one response, that from my State Representative who referred me an article recently written in a newspaper! It's amazing where our elected officials go to find information about the spending of our tax dollars, isn't it?"

Environmentalists need to consider humans in the environment, too, says Allmendinger. "Many agricultural communities are threatened by decreasing populations and the lack of adequate family services in those outlying areas. The average age of farmers and ranchers today, nationally, is over 50 years of age ... which should tell you something about the profitability of those professions. There's a lack of attraction for our young people who no longer can stay on those properties and make a decent living in order to support their families."

"This "environmental" movement that our society has purchased and we are paying for daily makes a definite statement to all of us regarding the value we, as a society, place on human life versus that placed on many animal species, " she says. "It's time we worry about real endangered species - ranchers and farmers. What effect will their loss will have on the environment?"

Published: May 17, 2001

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