Gary Anderson’ s fields are almost still, but it took $13,000 and thousands of hours to do it.
Anywhere Anderson looked on his southern Alberta ranch, the ground would be moving with thousands of gophers. He said he could step from gopher hole to gopher hole across the entire length of his 4,000-acre ranch south of Cardston on the United States border.
“The whole country was moving.”
The barren fields riddled with holes looked more like a military shooting range than a ranch, he said.
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No one wanted to rent his 1,500 acres of cropland this year. Tenants would be guaranteed to lose their crop to Richardson’ s ground squirrels, commonly known as gophers.
“They were scared to death of the gophers.”
This spring Anderson was given some hope that he might be able to save his ranch. Health Canada’ s Pest Management Regulatory Agency granted 47 of Alberta’ s 67 municipalities the emergency registration of two percent concentrate liquid strychnine.
The bottles of liquid strychnine are held under tight security by the municipalities’ agriculture fieldmen. Under their supervision, the poison is diluted to the usual 0.4 percent, mixed with grain and sold to farmers at cost.
It’ s the same concentration as the ready-mix strychnine that farmers used to be able to buy, but this kills the gophers.
“The only variable is freshness,” said Shaffeek Ali, with Alberta Agriculture’ s pest prevention and management unit.
Brian Peirce, technical director with Nu-Gro Corp. of Brantford, Ont., which manufacturers the product, said the company normally mixes strychnine and freshly groated oats in January and February, but the mixture often doesn’ t reach farmers’ fields until spring.
“It is possible the oats are aging and not as palatable,” Peirce said.
“The strychnine is exactly the same. The product is exactly the same product.”
Peirce said Nu-Gro bought all the available strychnine in North America when emergency registration was granted.
Strychnine is made in India from the nux vomica plant. The plant is dried, crushed, mixed with water and sieved to produce the deadly poison.
“It’ s a very simple biological product,” said Peirce.
The company has ordered more strychnine for next year in anticipation of another emergency registration.
That will happen if producers can still show there is an emergency and if this year’ s program was successful, said Richard Aucoin, acting chief registrar with the PMRA in Ottawa.
Anderson spent $5,000 on gopher poison last year, but said it never made a dent. This spring he tried using an anti-coagulant to kill the rodents. It seemed to be working, but it was extremely time consuming. He had to go back three days in a row to the same gopher hole to keep adding poison.
He has also tried enticing local hunters to his gopher shooting gallery. Often there would be eight to 10 trucks of men out for the weekend shooting spree. One group estimated they shot 20,000 rounds of ammunition without cleaning up the field.
A local bow club is coming out soon with their bows and arrows for target practice.
“It’ s a sport for them, but it wasn’ t for me. It’ s so depressing.”
Anderson said he thought he would have to abandon his ranch if he didn’ t find an effective form of gopher poison.
Until recently, he thought of his ranch as a little piece of paradise
“I was so disappointed, I was thinking of selling it. I know in five years this place wouldn’ t have been worth having.”
Emergency registration was granted April 30 and will end Aug. 31.
Since registration was granted, Anderson and an employee have spent 12 to 15 hours a day for the last three weeks poisoning gophers. Each of them ride an all-terrain vehicle three metres apart, dribbling a few kernels of poisoned grain into each gopher hole. They’ re forced to get off and walk in places where the gopher holes are too thick to drive the four-wheeled vehicles.
Anderson is using the strychnine mixture at half strength in an attempt to cut costs. He has already spent $13,000 to buy poison and hire an extra person to help apply it, and is only half done. He said he can’ t afford the money, but doesn’ t think he has any choice.
His only consolation is that the poison is working.
Gophers die within five minutes of eating it. He estimates he has killed 95 percent of the gophers on his cropland. He is going back over the same land to drop poison where he missed a few holes. He now sees only half a dozen gophers in a 10-acre spot.
Before, he saw thousands.
“Until you see it, you have no idea there can be that many gophers.”
Anderson said it might be the moisture in the grain that attracts the gophers, which must get their moisture from what they eat.
He will spend the next four weeks dropping poison on his 2,500 acres of hay and pastureland. He spent $2,800 on 100 bait stations, which are T-shaped cylinders designed to protect cattle from the poisoned grain.
The cattle won’ t sniff out the grain if he dribbles only about 15 kernels in front of a gopher hole, but any more than that and the cattle will eat it and die.
Anderson is worried Health Canada won’ t grant emergency registration again next year and he will not have access to the only poison that has worked since liquid strychnine was taken off the market in 1993.
“If they’ re not letting us have it next year, we’ ll be back in the same boat.”
