Colorado Revised Statutes Title 35. Agriculture § 35-7-101. Legislative declaration

Whereas, in many large areas of this state certain destructive rodent pests, such as jackrabbits, prairie dogs, ground squirrels, pocket gophers, and rats, have become so numerous and such a grave and immediate menace to the agricultural, horticultural, and livestock industries of the state that large numbers of the inhabitants engaged in such industries in the localities so infested are in great and imminent danger of being impoverished and reduced to want by the destruction of their crops; and, whereas, the situation is so serious and the emergency so urgent that public necessity demands that prompt, efficacious, and summary action be taken under the police power of the state to control, suppress, and eradicate the rodents in the areas infested by them; now, therefore, it is declared that in all fields, orchards, places, localities, and areas in the state infested with any such rodents in sufficient numbers as to materially injure agricultural or horticultural crops therein, such infestation is a public nuisance and subject to suppression and abatement as such under the provisions of this part 1.