Fundraiser: systemic change to protect prairie dogs from developers

As we've reported here before, members of Deep Green Resistance Colorado, in partnership with Wildlands Defense, have been campaigning to protect a large prairie dog population from developers intent on building the largest mall in America. Many local Castle Rock, CO residents gave near-unanimous testimony on behalf of delaying construction a few months, to at least relocate the prairie dogs in a marginally humane manner before destroying their homes. Yet the town council and the developers collaborated to painfully gas the prairie dogs, to make "the problem" go away. (And to minimize the danger of any protected raptors, who predate on prairie dogs, complicating the project by being present at a required upcoming bird count.)

This behavior is unacceptable. Though the developers have already murdered many of the prairie dogs, there is still time to stop the developers from further slaughter. Equally important is the need to show that communities will impose repercussions on companies which behave in such a wantonly destructive and cruel manner, to send a message that such actions will not be profitable. If we can sufficiently damage their bottom line, it will help protect other communities against reckless corporations in the future.

To this end, prairie dog supporters have launched a fundraiser to support:

...a referendum on the zoned planning amendments that pave the way for the prospective Promenade mall. The referendum will give the people of Castle Rock the ability to decide if they want this development company, who just slaughtered in the cruelest way imaginable thousands of prairie dogs, to continue their development of the largest commercial property in the history of the town.

[...] The example in Castle Rock has the opportunity to cast a far-reaching message to all future developers that have prairie dog colonies on the land they plan to develop.

Please support this effort by visiting the prairie dog fundraiser page, spreading the word, and donating money if you possibly can.