The University of California Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program has published a five-page “pest note” that discusses gopher biology and behavior and offers advice on trapping, baiting, exclusion, natural controls and habitat modification.
Several highlights of gopher control from the pest note, as reported in the San Jose Mercury News, include:
- Trapping is safe and effective. Locate the main tunnel — which can involve a fair amount of digging — and set traps in pairs facing opposite directions.
- Strychnine-treated grain bait is lethal with a single feeding, but you need to get the poison into the main tunnel, not the laterals. Anticoagulant baits are better to use in areas that children and pets might frequent.
- Hardware cloth or 3/4-inch chicken wire can be buried two feet deep and extended about a foot above ground to exclude gophers from areas you especially want to protect.
- Natural predators of gophers include owls, snakes, cats, dogs and coyotes. But predators, researchers say, rarely get all of them, preferring to “move on to hunt at more profitable locations.”
- Taking away a gopher’s food source may prompt it to seek better feeding grounds. The university suggests removing weedy areas near gardens to provide a “buffer strip of unsuitable habitat.”
- Flooding “can sometimes be used to force them from their burrows where they can be dispatched with a shovel or caught by a dog,” but smoke cartridges are “usually not effective” because a gopher can quickly seal off the burrow as soon as it detects the chemical.
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