The black-tailed prairie dog has been dropped from the federal endangered species candidate list, a move embraced by farmers and ranchers but which some conservationists decried as a mistake.

Government officials and interest groups announced Wednesday that the prairie dog had been removed from consideration for listing as an endangered species.

The move is good news for Wyoming farmers and ranchers, said Jim Magagna, executive vice president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association.

"It removes the threat of regulatory restrictions," Magagna said in a phone interview from Denver.

Magagna said he believes the decision is based on intense inventories of the black-tailed prairie dog across the West. Those inventories showed that the animal's numbers are higher than originally believed when it was put on the candidate list.

"I think it is a good example that the Endangered Species Act process is working and they are responding to new information appropriately," Magagna said.

But some conservationists disagree. Jeff Kessler of Laramie-based Biodiversity Conservation Alliance contends that the information that led to the candidate listing was "sound science." The species is under great pressure in Wyoming due to habitat loss through mineral and housing development.

"We believe this is a step in the wrong direction," Kessler said. "Now, (the black-tailed prairie dog) is not a priority at all. It's gone from the Endangered Species Act process."

The prairie dog is a "keystone" species, which means many other animals and even vegetation benefit from being near black-tailed prairie dog populations.

"It's an integral part of the prairie ecosystem," Kessler said. "Who are we to say what species is dispensable and shouldn't be a part of Wyoming's future?"

The decision to not extend endangered protection to prairie dogs will help ranchers whose land has been damaged by the rodents, South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds said Thursday.

"This will allow us to take a much more proactive approach in controlling the infestation of prairie dogs from federal lands onto private lands," Rounds said in a written statement.

Several Western states have worked for years to come up with their own management plans so the prairie dog would not be placed on the federal endangered species list.

A spokesman for the National Wildlife Federation, which requested the listing in 1999, said the organization believes the federal decision is a mistake that will allow states to give prairie dogs less protection than they had been planning to provide.

The NWF will not decide whether to challenge the federal decision in court until it has taken a hard look at the U.S. Interior Department's justifications for removing the prairie dog from the endangered species candidate list, said Sterling Miller, senior biologist for the NWF in Missoula, Mont.

"Based on the evidence we've seen so far, we think it's a bad decision," Miller said.

Rounds' office quoted Interior Secretary Gale Norton as saying scientists have concluded that 18 million prairie dogs exist on the Western Plains.

"Two years ago, almost to the day, I attended a town meeting in Rapid City where I heard the concerns of South Dakotans on this important issue," Norton said. "As a result, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, states and others have worked cooperatively to collect data on the status of black-tailed prairie dogs throughout much of the Western Plains."

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regional office in Lakewood, Colo., said Thursday that a formal notice of the decision was being submitted for publication in the Federal Register.

Colonies of prairie dogs once were found on up to 100 million acres from Canada to Mexico, but the population has dwindled through much of that range because of disease, eradication programs and urban sprawl.

In 2000, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said the prairie dog warranted listing as a threatened species but the agency did not have the resources to pursue the listing. After the finding, virtually all prairie dog control stopped on federal land.

On the Net:

http://mountain-prairie.fws.gov/species/mammals/btprairiedog/