Topeka ? A bill repealing the state’s 100-year-old mandate to eradicate prairie dogs is unlikely to pass this year because House and Senate negotiators cannot agree on a final version.

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Dan Johnson had hoped a bill would pass this year, because he feared the black-tailed prairie dog could soon be declared an endangered species for which landowners would have to set aside “critical habitat.” If Kansas can show it took steps to protect prairie dogs, such an order might be avoided.

But some interest groups and members of the Senate saw the bill itself as the bigger threat to private property rights.

The measure provides that those unwilling to rid their land of prairie dogs would have to develop management plans with counties — and could be liable if the rodents got onto neighboring property.

Johnson, R-Hays, and Senate Natural Resources Committee Chairman Robert Tyson could not work out the differences in negotiations last week.

Tyson, R-Parker, sees little danger of prairie dogs dying out, estimating there are seven for every person in the animal’s 11-state habitat.

“We’ve got so many now, we don’t need to be in a hurry to change,” he said Wednesday.

Seen as a pest by some Kansans, the black-tailed prairie dog population has declined 95 percent in Kansas in the past century, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates. The federal agency is studying whether to put the animal on the endangered species list.

Once prairie dogs are declared endangered, killing even one could be considered a violation of federal law, said Dan Mulhern, a biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service.

The House’s version of the bill would require landowners to “manage and control” rather than “eradicate” prairie dogs. Landowners could develop plans to keep the animals or kill them without government oversight.

But senators struck the word “manage,” because it was redundant, Tyson said. Prairie dogs could be killed or kept under the requirement to “control” them, he said.