CEDAR CITY, Utah (AP) - Iron County officials are frustrated that prairie dogs are preventing development in southern Utah.

The Utah prairie dog is considered a threatened species, and new construction is on hold in many areas until county officials can come up with a plan to relocate the animals.

"There's a lot of projects on hold because of this," said Dennis Stowell, a county commissioner.

County officials are rewriting their habitat-conservation plan because it doesn't meet the needs of the growing area.

"The things that concern us most are the inability to make some commercial development that the city really needs," Parowan Mayor Jim Robinson said.

Prairie dogs are "certainly not an endangered species in our community," he said.

The habitat-conservation plan doesn't address a certain recovery rate for the prairie dogs. But it does outline how the county will help with recovery and mitigate their relocation.

The animals are seen throughout Iron County. State biologists estimate there are more than 360 prairie dogs on the Cedar Ridge Golf Course.

A project that would have relocated prairie dogs from the golf course and those on land owned by the Pauite Tribe was halted this summer because of an environmental group's objection.

The group, Forest Guardians, contended that removing the prairie dogs is unnecessary and will lead to their extinction.

The city's plan for relocating the animals would have put them 28 miles northeast of Cedar City near Minersville Highway, in an area that the environmental group said has too many conflicting uses, including hunting, off-roading and grazing.