Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
PANGUITCH, Garfield County — A horse died after it stepped into a prairie dog hole and then flipped over a railing at a southern Utah horse racetrack Thursday, authorities said.
Garfield County sheriff’s officials said in a Facebook post that a 15-year-old girl was trotting around the track and she fell off. The horse continued to run after the girl fell, and it stepped into the hole in the ground and flipped over the railing.
The girl was uninjured from the fall but also witnessed the incident, authorities added.
There was a tragedy at the horse track in Panguitch on April 23, 2020. A fifteen year old female was trotting her horse...
Posted by Garfield County Sheriff's Office on Thursday, April 23, 2020
The incident prompted questions about how prairie dog holes are handled in southern Utah. Utah prairie dogs were listed as an endangered species in 1973 and reclassified as a threatened species in 1984, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. They remain listed as a threatened species.
But they’ve also been considered a nuisance by residents in southern Utah. Some residents even sued the federal government over the rodent species in 2013.
"They're really cute little things, but they really cause so much damage," Sharon Peterson, a Cedar City resident, told the Associated Press in 2015.
The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources did, for a brief time, oversee the management of prairie dogs from 2015 through 2017, but the management of the species is currently overseen by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, DWR spokeswoman Faith Heaton Jolley said.
In a statement, the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office said the DWR previously allowed the sheriff’s office to handle situations about the species.
"The protected prairie dogs cause a lot of problems in Garfield County and need to be controlled," the sheriff’s office statement reads. "The only time we didn’t have an issue with prairie dogs was when the DWR allowed the Sheriff’s Office to take matters in our hands to control them. Something needs to be done regarding the problematic prairie dogs, especially around our fairgrounds and racetrack area."
Jolley said the DWR is currently working with the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office to address prairie dog holes at the Panguitch racetrack.
"With authorization from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, DWR staff is working to fill the burrows and will trap and relocate prairie dogs in the area to prevent any further horse accidents," she said in a prepared statement Thursday afternoon.
KSL.com reached out to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for comment but didn't receive a response Thursday.
