Farmers in southwestern Saskatchewan coping with unusually high gopher populations have had a helping hand from a natural predator. But now badgers are becoming problems, too.
They make huge messes in fields as they dig holes to capture their prey. The gophers, formally known as Richardson’s ground squirrels, had already left many fields looking like lunar landscapes.
The consolation, said Cameron Wilk of Saskatchewan Agriculture, is that badgers will eventually move on to browner pastures.
“It’s a mixed blessing,” he said.
Badgers like to eat gophers and other small rodents, but there will likely never be enough of them to maintain a level of control, especially when there is such a large gopher infestation.
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Wilk said badgers tend to settle down and clean out a small colony and then move along.
While they create problems for farmers in terms of field conditions, it’s best to leave them alone. He said farmers who kill badgers are removing one level of predators.
Producers in southwestern Saskatchewan have reported shooting tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition at gophers this year.
Typically, gopher populations have a three-year cycle. In the southwest they are in the sixth or seventh year of high populations.
Wilk said he has regularly visited fields this fall and saw gophers running around in eight centimetres of snow in the southeastern corner of the province.
Work is continuing on finding ways to control populations other than through stronger strychnine.
An Agricultural Development Fund research project in partnership with the Western College of Veterinary Medicine is looking at how adding vitamins to bait can affect gophers’ detoxification systems.
For some reason, certain gophers are able to withstand poison. Wilk said certain vitamins are thought to inhibit that process.
The project has been running for three years and researchers recently applied for another three years of funding.
Alberta researchers are conducting an economic analysis of gopher populations and the damage they cause.
In the meantime, Wilk said the trick to gopher control is to get out early in spring when the males and females first appear above ground.
