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Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief to Halt Shooting and Poisoning of Prairie Dogs
This action seeks declaratory and injunctive relief requiring the Federal Defendants to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, and the National Forest Management Act. Absent such legal compliance, this action seeks to halt a large-scale federal prairie dog poisoning and shooting program scheduled to begin shortly across much of the Buffalo Gap National Grassland in South Dakota, largely in an area known as the Conata Basin. Inconceivably, the Federal Defendants plan to poison and shoot prairie dogs in areas where prior conservation efforts carried out by federal officials under the Endangered Species Act, established the world’s only successfully self-sustaining population of critically endangered black-footed ferrets. Black-footed ferrets are entirely dependent on large prairie dog colonies for survival. Conata Basin contains the only complex of prairie dog colonies on federal land in the Great Plains large enough to maintain a viable population of black-footed ferrets.
WildEarth Guardians’ members seek to compel the federal agencies charged with protecting biologically imperiled species, to follow the laws designed to protect and recover those species. WildEarth Guardians and its members regularly avail themselves of the public participation opportunities available to the public under NEPA in order to better inform themselves and decision-makers of the environmental consequences of agency decisions.