Freeloading ferrets to gorge on prairie dogs in wildlife refuge.

Here’s some news Castle Rock can use:

It’s okay to kill prairie dogs if it serves a higher environmental cause, like feeding the rodents en masse to ferrets.

Not just any ferrets, though, the critters must be the endangered black-footed variety like the ones being turned loose this fall in the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge.

In other news, the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge is now accepting prairie dogs for a new environmental relocation program called The Food Chain.

Okay, we made up the last part.

As for the glorious new feed-a-ferret project at the refuge, that was reported by the Denver Post’s environmental activist-in-chief Bruce Finley. Without a single hint of irony, he writes:

The ferrets will help control prairie dogs that are threatening newly restored native prairie, each eating 100 to 150 prairie dogs a year, refuge manager Dave Lucas said. Eventually, the refuge will support 160 of the federally protected ferrets, Lucas said.

Their elongated bodies and super-sensitive snouts let them slink at night through underground tunnels to prairie dog dens. They clamp their teeth into sleeping prairie dogs and devour them.

That sounds even worse than the fate of the elite Castle Rock prairie dogs that are being relocated for a shopping development.

Pity the poor prairie dog that isn’t even safe in a wildlife refuge and is treated like food.

Wait till the Prairie Dog Liberation Front hears about this.