[BoulderCouncilHotline] follow up questions to prairie dog tour

[Carlisle, Cynthia]

Dear Dan,
Thanks to OSMP Staff and all those who participated in today's OSMP prairie dog field trip. So interesting to see and learn about the differences between the Southern Grasslands with its mosaic of thousands of acres of native, untilled tall and mixed grass prairies, interspersed with some large prairie dog towns, rare butterflies and diverse bird species - and even plant communities from the Pleistocene - and the Northern Grasslands with thousands of acres of irrigated pastureland, some having as much as 50 to 60% prairie dog occupancy, and 1,000 acres that have so much soil degradation and loss that extensive measures and years will be needed to restore them.
I would like to learn more about the damage to our ag lands and grasslands and the city's costs associated with it:

  1.  Brett talked about the experimental treatments to improve soil health and Carbon sequestration on degraded lands, its success thus far, and that this effort is not now budgeted. How much will the city need to budget over what period of time to achieve the desired improvements?  What fraction of the 1,000 acres do you expect to treat this way vs. the prairie dog relocation, seeding and irrigation treatment that Andy described?
  2.  What will be the approximate costs of restoring the 1000 acres of degraded lands using standard/traditional means? And how long will it take to bring them back to being productive?
  3.  I understand that the native prairies in the Southern Grasslands naturally sequester Carbon - can we have an idea of how much Carbon sequestration they are responsible for in comparison to irrigated ag pastures and OSMP forests?
  4.  As unappealing as it is, should we choose to move forward and remove prairie dogs from the Northern irrigated pastures that have occupancy exceeding the 26% goal, please provide us with the costs for the following:
a. overall, how many prairie dogs total would need to be relocated to reach the 26% occupancy goal in the North?
b. how many prairie dogs could be transferred to the Southern Grasslands/year and at what cost?
c. how many prairie dogs could be removed using the kinds of removal strategies that the County is using and transfer the prairie dogs to the Raptor Center or the Black-footed ferret Center in Ft Collins and at what cost? (i.e., staff and equipment/materials costs)
d. how many years of b + c would it take to reach the goal in a. if a plague event did not occur?
d. By comparison, what damages are being done to irrigated pastureland given the current levels of prairie dog occupancy? (e.g., costs to lesees, costs in terms of water rights, potential liability to OSMP for damage to private lands, reservoirs, and other neighbors)
Thanks much for the information.
Cindy

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