Farmers have another tool to kill the Richardson’s ground squirrel now that a southern Alberta man’s product has been registered.
The product, called Exit in Canada and Vargon in the United States, was fast tracked to registration because it’s effective while also safe to non-target animals and the environment, said inventor Don Sutherland of Cochrane, Alta.
Martha Farkas, an evaluation officer with Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency, said it’s the first non-toxic product registered for control of ground squirrels, more commonly known as gophers.
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“This product works by asphyxiation,” she said.
Instead of the usual 18 month to five year registration process, Exit was granted reduced risk status in Canada April 16 after a 12-month evaluation process. The product was fast tracked through a joint process between Health Canada and the United States’ Environmental Protection Agency.
“It will replace strychnine and other poisons,” said Sutherland, who invented Exit after a 15 year battle with gophers on his acreage, which is surrounded by the 16,000 acre Glenbow Ranch.
“It’s faster and more effective than poisons in use,” said Sutherland, who has cleaned the gophers from his 10 acre property, as well as another 40 acres that he dubbed a no fly zone.
During his presentation to the EPA in Washington, D.C., officials approved the reduced risk status application after two hours of consultation.
“The decision was unanimous,” Sutherland said.
Unlike traditional poisons that rely on animals eating bait covered with a poison, Exit is a foaming product that kills by blocking an animal’s respiratory system.
Plastic cones are tucked into each gopher hole. Then, a high-pressure pump run from a vehicle’s cigarette lighter injects foam through the cones into each tunnel.
Within a minute the rodent stops moving and is dead within three, said Sutherland, who wanted to make a product that met humane international trapping guidelines for a quick kill.
The foam acts as a respiratory irritant blocking the exchange of oxygen in the lungs. The animal dies from asphyxiation. It has proved to be 94 to 100 percent effective in trials. Testing on Norway rats in the lab and the field yielded similar results.
The foam remains in the burrows for two to four hours and gradually disappears. It does not harm the environment or non-target species. Poisoning of non-target animals was one reason liquid strychnine was removed from the market in 1993.
Sutherland, a retired geological engineer, began his research with a sulfur byproduct produced from the scrubbing of natural gas. The material foamed and put gophers to sleep for a long time.
He eventually discovered that it was the foam and not the sulfur that was key.
“We knew the foam was an essential part of the mix because it is the thing that puts the gopher to sleep.”
He then tried adding cayenne, horse radish and chlorine, but it was when he used Keen’s dry mustard from the kitchen cupboard that he knew he had a winner.
“With mustard the difference was very startling and instantaneous,” said Sutherland.
“It was like magic.”
A patent is pending on both the formula and the method of application in Canada, the U.S. and around the world.
Sutherland said Exit has worked well in demonstrations in city parks and cemeteries where poison can’t be used and gophers have multiplied.
“We don’t want the gophers digging more than the gravediggers.”
Rod Foggin of Alberta’s Cardston County has seen the demonstration and thinks it is ideal for towns and villages, but questions its use in fields.
“I don’t think it’s feasible in large areas. It’s so labour intensive you’ve got to go to each hole,” said Foggin, who helped organize the drive to get an emergency registration of two percent liquid strychnine available for farmers in 2001.
Foggin said farmers prefer strychnine when it’s available because it’s quick and easy to use, but it has been difficult to get in the past two years because of political unrest in Afganistan, Pakistan and India.
Sutherland has leased the rights to manufacture and market the product in Canada to Exit Holdings in Kamloops, B.C.
Wally McCulloch of Exit Holdings said he doesn’t expect problems keeping up with the demand.
