YORKTON - Richardson’s ground squirrels are fecund little critters, and they have a tendency to dig their burrows as populations grow in the most inconvenient places – of farmer fields and pastures.
That presents problems from dirt mounds going into machinery, busted and bent gear if it bounced into a large burrow, or livestock injuries from an ill-placed hoof.
So, it’s not surprising many farmers would like the rodents gone.
Typically through the years that has meant putting out strychnine and letting the ground squirrels consume the poison and die.
It’s not a particularly nice thought, a population of little critters dying of poison ingestion, but it is a relatively effective / low cost way of dealing with the pests which the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan suggests is causing some $9 million in farm damage in a year.
However, strychnine use has not been allowed for some time.
APAS is suggesting the ban needs to be lifted, wanting strychnine reinstated under emergency use provisions. The group has asked the federal agriculture and health ministers to consider the request.
The Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities wants the same thing. It suggests Saskatchewan landowners have struggled dealing with the growing population of Richardson’s ground squirrels after the federal ban on strychnine in March of 2024. SARM has suggested strychnine is a crucial tool used by farmers to control growing gopher populations in rural municipalities.
In my younger days on the farm I dealt with gophers, typically with a .22, so I hold an appreciation they are a pest in the wrong place.
But, put them in a city lot near a railroad track and they can be cute and fun to watch too, which may suggest I am more urbanized in my views today.
And, in that regard I must admit I wonder would happens to coyotes and foxes, hawks and owls and the like – the typical natural controls on ground squirrel populations, which happen to grab a nice lunch which happens to have a strychnine-filled belly?
One also wonders are ground squirrels the only consumers of the poison, or do other rodents and even songbirds become poisoned?
Imagine for a minute that ground squirrels are digging holes in a neighbourhood park in a community and out goes strychnine. Would dog and cat owners be happy with that decision?
It is ultimately a very old debate, where the line between farmers being able to go about their business without interference from animals, and how one protects what overall I a dwindling animal population. It just so happens it’s a gopher in the middle of this battlefield.
