Developers Ken Mitchell and Tony Vienna, with the help of volunteers, created a small neighborhood within their larger neighborhood development, a network of burrows and grassland for prairie dogs.
Working with the Prairie Dog Coalition and Colorado Parks and Wildlife, the team moved 120 prairie dogs from their burrows on the south side of West First Street, across from Mariana Butte, to make way for 76 single family homes.
But instead of simply taking the property away from the animals, the developers created a new home for them at the back side of the lot in a natural area that overlooks Boedecker Lake.
They found a way to maintain a natural balance that will benefit the entire ecosystem for the residents who eventually will live and play on, site as well as for the animals, said Mitchell, with Mosaic Land Development Services.
“The intrinsic value of doing something that is the right thing to do … that’s what we want to pass on to future generations,” said Lindsey Sterling Krank, environmental scientist with the Prairie Dog Coalition of the Humane Society of the United States. “Being part of that larger picture that leaves a legacy of conservation … makes your life richer, not in money sense but with more.”
The value of nature
The residents who move into the homes will pay about $2.50 more per month because of the costs associated with relocating the prairie dogs, Mitchell said.
But they will gain so much more, he continued, in being part of a sustainable solution and in enjoyment of nature.
Standing near the relocated colony, Vienna, also with Mosaic, pointed out at least four raptors soaring in the blue sky near Boedecker Lake, a view people love — and a species that would not be able to thrive in that area without a food source.
“The prairie dog’s main importance is food for the raptors,” Vienna said. “It’s not just that people are trying to save a rodent. It’s the circle of life. You’ve got to keep the prairie dogs alive to provide food for raptors, to provide food for coyotes. It’s perpetual motion.”
Plus, he and Mitchell both said that while moving the prairie dogs took time, energy and money, it was the right thing to do.
“We can’t keep taking without giving,” said Vienna. “Although we took, we gave equally.”
A unique partnership
Not only was Mosaic on board, but so was the main developer, Jim Righeimer of Boedecker Lake Partners, LLC, who lives in California, and the builder, American Legend out of Dallas, Texas. They were willing to provide the relocation site plus money and resources, Mitchell said.
With a background in natural resources management, Mitchell describes himself as “a developer who is also an environmentalist.” The Fort Collins man also is a free thinker, who was willing to listen when nearby residents mentioned the prairie dogs at neighborhood meetings.
He listened and came to the table with a solution, offering land on the neighborhood natural area and about $40,000 plus staff time to relocate what Sterling Krank describes as a very interconnected species with one of the most sophisticated communications networks ever studied.
That developer willingness created what Sterling Krank said was a unique partnership with the Prairie Dog Coalition, which also donated thousands of dollars in volunteer time and expertise for the relocation.
She credited Mitchell’s vision and willingness to give as well as take, while he lauded the nonprofit’s dedication, passion and expertise to saving these critters.
“We all contributed a lot to make it happen,” Sterling Krank said in an email. “It was worth it to us to do the right thing, which is still a small fraction of the project costs.”
A short stay away
Vienna and Mitchell joke that the prairie dogs enjoyed a short vacation, inside, as they waited for their new homes to be built.
In reality, the team captured all 120 prairie dogs and moved them, in small animal carriers, to a barn on one of Vienna’s development properties in Berthoud. There, they were fed, watered and tended daily, living inside the barn in a holding facility from late August until early December.
Meanwhile, the people who were tending to them were working on creating their new neighborhood.
The developer dug the burrows with heavy equipment and then made them with PVC pipe in an area across the property but with much more native vegetation for the animals to forage. They followed direction from the Prairie Dog Coalition’s experts to create a neighborhood very similar to the original.
Mitchell and Vienna, along with the volunteers checked on the critters daily and made sure they were healthy and ready, on a day in December, to return to their new homes. The critters were so well fed that, when it came time to release them, the team worried they might be too plump to fit into their burrows.
“It’s already their neighborhood, we just moved their homes … to the high-rent district,” Mitchell said.
Sterling Krank and her team had tracked which prairie dogs were in each family unit and where they lived in their original neighborhood and made sure to return each animal to the right spot, using science to ensure success.
“They tried to put everybody in the same spacial relation,” said Mitchell. “They managed to relocate them to the individual level.”
“It turned out to be successful beyond our wildest dreams,” said Mitchell.
A model for the future
While this relocation was a success, Mitchell hopes it also will serve as a model for the future. He hopes that other developers will follow suit and find ways to preserve nature, including prairie dogs, to boost the overall ecosystem.
Because not all developments have an on-site location to move prairie dogs, Mitchell would like to see several large chunks of land donated as relocation sites within the county. Perhaps a landowner who has sold off mineral rights and is left with a dryland prairie would step up with land to allow more success stories like the one in west Loveland, Mitchell said.
As for the prairie dogs at the Boedecker Lake site, for now they are in an enclosure with barriers to prevent them from spreading to the construction site.
Eventually that barrier will be in the form of fences for surrounding homes, and the prairie dogs will have free run of the natural area that is on the southwest end of the development, bordering a strip of property that the city of Loveland bought, along with the surface rights to the water, for a future natural area and trail. (That deal, again, was brokered by Mitchell through the overall developer, Jim Righeimer.)
The project, Mitchell described, balances development with environmentalism, two goals often thought of as opposing interests but that, as shown by this project can thrive as partners.
He added, “Saving the environment, respecting nature, doing the right thing, it’s all hard work and dedication and inspired people trying to make a difference.”
Pamela Johnson: 970-699-5405, johnsonp@reporter-herald.com, twitter.com/RHPamelaJ.
