Becoming a Pest
Prairie Dog Ecology and the Human Economy in the Euroamerican West
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12451485 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Susan D Jones (0000-0001-6956-278X, University of Colorado Boulder, corresponding author), Susan Jones (0000-0003-0639-1586) |
| Year | 1999 |
| Volume | 4 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 531-552 |
| Publication date | 1999-10-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Environmental History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1084-5453 • E-ISSN: 1930-8892 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.2307/3985400 |
| OpenAlex | W2174452769 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
A small western Colorado town, Nucla, held its first annual Top World Championship Prairie Shoot during July weekend in 1990. Attracting hunters from as far away as Hawaii, the shoot was designed to kill as many inhabitants of large prairie dog colony as possible in the time allotted. Shooters paid fee to enter the contest, which was sponsored by both local gun club and the town council, and in 1990 managed to kill 2,956 prairie dogs in two days. Locals made money by selling souvenirs such as prairie dog coffins and prairie dog blush wine to tourists.' The Top Dog contest sparked nationwide controversy: was this necessary varmint cleanup and moneymaker for an impoverished western town or sickening destruction of helpless animals? Elated hunters held up freshly bagged prairie dog tails as handful of non-local animal rights protestors yelled It takes big man to kill little prairie dog!2 While letters to Colorado newspapers supported the right of residents to rid their land of varmints, some papers editorialized their concern with the replacement of Colorado's carefully nurtured image as tourist mecca by nationally publicized images of the state as a rather savage and frightening place where gun-toting sportsmen go to live out frontier fantasy.3 Although the effect of the Top Dog shoot on Colorado's tourist image was controversial, the local residents' attitude toward prairie dogs seemed clear. Genneve Joslin, Nucla grandmother, remembered killing the rodents as child and selling their tails for up to nickel apiece. Many Top Dog participants such as hunter Kevin Looper, were experienced prairie dog hunters: Everybody's got dogs, and they are more than happy to let you shoot them if you ask. This interest in killing prairie dogs reflected decades of local efforts to remove the animals from the landscape, story replicated elsewhere in the rodents' western habitat. Over the past century, prairie dogs have been widely represented as pest that needed to be exterminated. Although concern for endangered species and animal
Archaeology · Club · CONTEST · Ethnology · Frontier · Geography · Media studies · Newspaper · Political science · Sociology · Tourism · Archaeology and Natural History · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Yersinia bacterium, plague, ectoparasites research
| Citations per year | 0.23 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2004 - 2025 (22) |
| Highly cited | No |