Prairie Dog Colony Sparks Longmont HOA Feud

Jaime Fraina walks almost every day along Left Hand Creek in Longmont, where he enjoys a little fresh air and nature. Fraina particularly likes seeing the prairie dogs, which he often sees calling to each other, poking their heads out of the ground or relaxing in the sun.

But those prairie dogs will soon be eliminated if the Harvest Junction Village Homeowners Association, which manages part of the open space where Fraina walks, follows through with a plan to kill them. To prevent the death of those prairie dogs, Fraina says he's proposed alternative solutions to keep the creatures from wandering into yards, but the HOA hasn't been receptive.

“Because I'm an apartment renter instead of a homeowner, they've been pushing me away like my opinion doesn't matter. Deleting my posts and blocking me, all sorts of things to quiet me down and not hear about the concerns that people are having about this,” he adds.

Fraina started a GoFundMe campaign to raise funds so that 100-plus prairie dogs can be relocated without costing the HOA any money. Over forty members of the HOA have signed a petition saying they don’t want their dues to be used to kill the prairie dogs.

This isn't the first time Fraina has tried to save prairie dogs. He recently helped coordinate a volunteer effort to relocate around 100 prairie dogs from Dry Creek Park in Longmont to Pueblo; after the city had already moved around 800 prairie dogs, officials planned to kill the remaining animals. Although volunteers couldn’t move all of the rest off the property, saving some still felt significant to Fraina.

His latest effort has been more difficult, however.

According to Fraina, the Harvest Junction Village HOA had to replace 44 trees last year, and some people have erroneously blamed the problem on prairie dogs.

“I confirmed with a few residents, with a board member, that zero of them were caused by prairie dogs,” he says. “It was all poor irrigation. It was all planting incorrectly and various other issues that caused this, but people like to just put the blame on these little critters because there's a lot of other misinformation out there about them.”

Prairie dogs are often associated with plague and considered one of the most susceptible animals to the disease, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. In 2019, parking and camping at the annual weekend of Phish concerts in Commerce City was restricted after local health officials determined plague-carrying fleas had infected a nearby prairie dog colony.

However, the CDPHE has only documented seven cases of plague connected to prairie dogs in Colorado since 1957. Fraina doesn’t want misconceptions to lead to more unnecessary animal deaths.

According to Fraina, local prairie dog relocator Susan Sommers has agreed to catch and move the animals for just the cost of transportation, bait and supplies. Additionally, nonprofit Grasslands Colorado has offered to pay “rent” for the animals until they are moved through its ambassador program, which compensates property owners for allowing prairie dogs to live on their land.

Fraina says he has also recommended a barrier that would keep prairie dogs on open parkland rather than allowing them to get on the HOA property. Boulder County Open Space has a design for a chicken wire fence with a portion that goes into the ground so that the animals can’t burrow underneath.

He estimates the costs would be between $3,000 and $4,000 for these solutions and has already raised over $2,500 in just over a week.

“We have an effective barrier, volunteers that are willing to help out with costs and time to install it, and the HOA might even profit from the rent they can charge for the prairie dogs,” Fraina says. “I don't really understand why they would want to just kill off them right away.”

In Longmont, there are two types of permits property owners must get to manage prairie dogs on their land. Minor prairie dog permits, which allow extermination, are available for properties or prairie dog territories less than 1.5 acres in size or if the site has urban development — defined as approved for residential or nonresidential “open space, recreation or drainage purposes” by the city.

Major prairie dog permits used in all other cases require a survey by a wildlife biologist and a relocation plan to be submitted to the city. But even though the Harvest Junction site is over 1.5 acres, the HOA qualifies for a minor permit through the urban development clause. Fraina believes that's a loophole that should be closed; in any case, he doesn't believe extermination is a good solution for this colony.

Fraina says he ran into an HOA board member while canvassing the neighborhood with his petition who told him the board doesn’t want to miss a cycle of grass growth in the area, so the HOA is trying to move quickly to get rid of the animals.

When he reached out to HOA president Mark Pabst about the issue, Fraina says Pabst told him that his daily walks constituted trespassing into Harvest Junction Village, since half of the land along the creek is maintained by Fraina’s apartment complex and the other half by the HOA.

“There is a prairie dog colony that spans both Harvest Junction Village property and City of Longmont property,” Pabst says. “We are working with the City of Longmont as the colony needs to be addressed in its totality. Other than that, we have no comment.”

According to City of Longmont public information officer Rogelio Mares, the Harvest Junction HOA land does not touch any city property, and the city’s only involvement is issuing the minor prairie dog permit.

The HOA is scheduled to meet on Monday, January 20, to further discuss the animals. Fraina isn’t allowed to attend the meeting but says several of the residents who signed his petition plan to be there.