The state Wildlife Commission this week will discuss adding new firepower to Colorado's arsenal of lethal measures to wipe out prairie dogs and other burrowing creatures: explosive gases.
Under a proposal by the Colorado Division of Wildlife, explosive gases - such as a mix of oxygen and propane - could be injected and then ignited inside the burrows of prairie dogs, ground squirrels, gophers and marmots.
Wildlife officials say they've been approached by organic-produce growers interested in using the gases, which deliver a powerful concussive force that kills the animals and collapses their tunnels.
"This is a way for them to avoid using toxic substances to help them remain certified as organic," said Colorado Division of Wildlife spokesman Tim Holeman. "It's a new tool for them."
To kill, you must know your enemy, and in this case my enemy is a varmint. 4
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Posted 2:06 PM on 13 Jul 2006
by David Roberts -
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David Roberts is staff writer for Grist. You can follow his Twitter feed at twitter.com/drgrist.
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JMG Posted 6:20 am
13 Jul 2006
Anyway, she's got a chapter in there about prairie dogs, and how the people who want to eradicate them have dug their own graves ... turns out that highly evolved ecosystems need all the players (whodda thunkit?)--including the ones that do what prarie dogs and gophers do.
(Outwater was Larry Gonick's co-author in the also pretty damn good "A Cartoon Guide to the Environment.")
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kenb Posted 7:00 am
13 Jul 2006
You may have taken this to far. Usually farmers and gardeners want to kill varmint is a small area. I live next to a field with a gopher city. If I did not use gas to kill the gophers in my garden I would get NO potatoes, or leeks, and a few other things.
I cannot possibly kill all the gophers in the nearby gopher city, and heck they breed 3 times a season and I can't even easily keep them out of my garden.
It ain't about connectedness. I understand that we all live on the same planet. But it is about protecting the fruits of your labor, and in many cases it is about LOCAL FOOD production.
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The Mole Posted 9:30 am
13 Jul 2006
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amazingdrx Posted 11:38 pm
13 Jul 2006
As with automatic weapons*. The problem is obvious in Iraq where each family is entitled to one AK-47. How does one disarm the country and obtain peace where machine guns are legal?
Please don't unleash the non-nuclear, A-bomb like fuel/air bomb on rural america. Even what teenage boys would do with this would be awful, not to mention domestic US militant survivalist types.
Weasels are natural predators on these varmints and will gladly control the population given some room for their habitat. of course that means these same organic farmers who may have chickens would need to carefully maintain their chicken wire.
It is designed specifically for weasel exclusion. Weasels are wonderful animals, under appreciated because of their skillfull predation.
(And gardeners playing with pure oxygen explosions? That is REALLY not necessary. Only the propane would be used as there is plenty of oxygen already in the air. This makes me wonder what kind of nuttiness exists in this department in Colorado government.)
*Judge Alito ruled in his earlier court career that the feds ought to have no legal ability to regulate automatic weapons.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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