Last week, as dozens of prairie dogs marked for eradication sat caged for hours in the sweltering afternoon heat, advocates calling on Lafayette leaders to spare the colony were quick to cite protections afforded under the city’s Climate Bill of Rights — the same law invoked by protesters who, only weeks earlier, had hijacked a City Council meeting in an effort to thwart a vote new drilling regulations.

Officials eventually stayed the prairie dogs’ removal — and have since suspended any vote on new oil and gas codes for the time being — but the momentary drama — and lasting uncertainty about the colony’s future — has sparked a conversation about whether the anti-fracking bill’s environmental protections reach beyond the effects of energy extraction to shield the removal of wildlife.

Sanctioned by city leaders last spring after some heavy revisions, the bill’s function has since been subject to varying interpretations. They range from viewing it as a symbolic rebuff of oil and gas development to an effective ban on drilling within city limits, depending on who is asked. It’s seldom referenced in conversations that extend beyond fracking, but advocates say allusions to other protections exist within its broadly written language.

They point to the bill’s clauses stating a “healthy climate and life sustaining resources” are rights that should be allocated equally to both “residents” and “ecosystems.” The latter’s inclusion is both intentional and essential for the cause, advocates say.

“The rights of nature that the bill affords includes rights to a healthy ecosystem,” Lafayette resident Genna Brocone wrote in an email last Thursday. “With the eradication of the colony, the city is depriving both the colony and its predators the right to life-sustaining resources.”

The bill adds that those same allowances “include the right to be free from all activities within the city of Lafayette that interfere” with the aforementioned “healthy climate.”

Much like oil and gas development, the importance prairie dogs play for the surrounding environment has become an increasingly emotional and polarized issue in recent years along the Front Range.

Those who disagree with the importance of prairie dogs’ survival have state law to back their removal efforts. Deemed a “nuisance animal,” restrictions for trapping and killing prairie dogs on private property are almost nil.

“I think it depends on how far people want to take (the interpretation of the bill),” said Deanna Meyer, the co-founder and chief executive of Prairie Protection Colorado, a nonprofit advocacy group. “The Climate Bill dictates that global environmental destruction, including to things like ecosystems, constitutes an emergency.

“That would directly protect the prairie dogs and their huge importance that they play in maintaining ecosystems,” she added.

Lafayette Councilwoman Merrily Mazza, one of the Climate Bill’s early architects, says she intends to seize on the heightened focus on the bill that’s come about in the days since the Lafayette trapping effort went viral, saying, “if people want to get involved and expand protections, I’m all for it.”

Whether or not the bill’s original intent was to reach outside of oil and gas does not disqualify it from being interpreted to allow for greater protections after the fact, she added.

“When we wrote the bill originally we were focused mainly on the oil and gas industry,” she added. “But I suppose it could be used” to offer broader protections.

However, with large-scale drilling now planned to narrowly avoid Lafayette land and an overhaul to the city’s drilling codes momentarily on hold, the bulk of the bill’s lofty legal ambitions have yet to lead to new regulations.

And in its current form — with the controversial enforcement clause that permeated most of the discussion in its early readings removed — municipal attorneys suggest the Climate Bill’s effectiveness in thwarting oil and gas development is murky at best. The bill’s ability to regulate protections for wildlife is even more dubious.

Lafayette city attorney David Williamson hesitated to speculate about what the bill’s reach into other categories could yield, noting the limitations placed on cities when dealing with prairie dog colonies.

“We have policies for removal on city property,” he said. “But that’s about as far we can go.”

Beyond that, he added, it falls into the state’s jurisdiction.

Another rescue effort is unlikely to succeed without leaders realizing the Climate Bill’s extent, say activists who suggest parameters for exterminating the animal are acutely lax across the Front Range’s development-poised fields. And unlike Boulder’s good faith requirements for relocation, Lafayette regulations are thinner and easier to subvert: citing an “emergency” to city-assets, the 14-day public notification required for any prairie dog removal process was nixed for Thursday’s efforts.

Lafayette spokeswoman Debbie Wilmot last week said the animals still must be moved, but she was not sure when or how that will happen.

Anthony Hahn: 303-473-1422, hahna@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/_anthonyhahn