Wichita ? A Logan County landowner has won a restraining order prohibiting the county from poisoning any more prairie dogs on his land, his lawyer said.

Exterminators showed up on Larry Haverfield’s ranch and began using aluminum phosphide gas to poison nearly 100 acres of prairie dog burrows. A 1904 state law allows county governments to poison land with prairie dogs and bill the landowner.

Wichita attorney Randy Rathbun won the restraining order Monday to keep any more acreage from being poisoned.

“I hated to see them come on us and use that kind of poison,” Haverfield told The Wichita Eagle. “It kills everything in the holes. We would have liked to have someone come and seen us and talked about barriers and poison use.”

County Clerk Pat Schippers told The Associated Press on Tuesday that county commissioners did not want to comment on the ongoing dispute.

The use of aluminum phosphide requires a permit from the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks. The permit for Haverfield’s ranch was signed without the landowners having a chance to protest the use of the poison.

“I was utterly amazed Wildlife and Parks signed off on this,” Rathbun said. “Especially when there are good rodenticides that target prairie dogs. But with this poison, whatever is in the burrow gets killed. It’s highly aggressive.”

The process involves pouring water down burrows and dropping in the poisonous tablets, then placing sandbags to block the burrow exits.

Some consider prairie dogs a threat because the rodents carry diseases such as bubonic plague and can destroy farmland with their holes.

Environmentalists fear the poisoning may have killed other animals besides prairie dogs and threatened a federal plan to reintroduce endangered black-footed ferrets, a prairie dog predator, to Kansas.

Keith Sexson, assistant secretary for operations for Kansas Wildlife and Parks, signed the permit for the poison. The county had sought a permit that would have allowed 10,000 acres to be poisoned; the permit was for 100 acres.

“This is the first time a permit has come under scrutiny like this,” Sexson said. “There’s been a long-going debate in Logan County about prairie dogs. It’s relative to the county commissioners and their authority of control on lands where prairie dogs are wanted.”

The colonies attract other animals that use the burrows for shelter and food sources, said Ron Klataske, executive director of Audubon of Kansas.