LOGAN COUNTY, Kansas, Dec. 13, 2006 - "There goes one now."

The prairie dog is at the center of a controversy big enough to make headlines in the New York Times.

But the fight is here in Logan County, far from the big city, in a landscape where cattle easily outnumber people.

"I’ve lived here since 1975," Lynn Kirham said. "There's always been prairie dogs, and there always will be."

The prairie dogs themselves aren't the problem, but the number of them is.

"I suppose there's 10,000 prairie dogs out there," Kirham said. "That's a lot."

Ranchers like Lynn Kirham say they're eating away at the grass, and costing them thousands.

"That's our business growing grass to grow beef," Kirham said.

But on the opposite side of the fight is this man, Larry Haverfield.

"We like prairie dogs," Haverfield said. "We think they're important to range land."

He sees the prairie dog as a benefit, increasing the nutritional value of the grass for his cattle.

"We think that's important to try and put things like it was when the buffalo were here," Haverfield said.

But neighboring ranchers say Haverfield's not controlling the prairie dogs on his land, making the rodent impossible to maintain on their land.

"I compare this to somebody in the city living next to you that has a rat-infested place," Kirham said. "The rats keep coming and coming over there and you keep pinioning them and try to get rid of them and you can't.  Well if that person never controls the rats you're going to continually have that problem."

But the battle isn't just over the prairie dog. There's another controversy over how to control them.

One option is poison. The county commission told Haverfield if he didn't poison the prairie dogs they'd do it for him, and send him the $100,000 bill.

"We're trying to reign in the prairie dogs," Haverfield said. "We want them to stay with us. Our neighbors don't want them. We don't mind if they kill theirs, but we'd like to maintain them here because we think it's a healthy situation."

While Haverfield may not agree with the poison, a non-toxic solution is just as controversial. The federal government proposes introducing the black-footed ferret, a predator of the prairie dog.

"What's causing the frenzy is if the ferrets are allowed to come here, people are worried they won't be able to kill their prairie dogs because they're an endangered species," Haverfield said.

Federal officials promise farmers that they won't be responsible for protecting the endangered species for five years, but ranchers wonder what happens after that. And, they question if the ferrets will control the problem.

"Out in those places where they're really infested, you have thousands and thousands of prairie dogs so it would take a lot of ferrets," Kirham said.

So for today, the battle continues. One side is hoping to restore wildlife, the other wanting to protect economic interest in a tough year for agriculture.