Gophers 'ripping up crops' at Calgary-area farm
The number of gophers popping up on Alberta farms and ranches have gone up in the last couple years. The rodents are being blamed for tunnelling through pastures and destroying crops and some say, there's no stopping them now.
Joe Zink farms a couple thousand acres of land just west of Calgary. He says thousands of gophers are ripping up his crops.
"Screw the weeds, look at these freaking gophers everywhere," Zink tells CBC News.
"You go along with your multi-million dollar pieces of equipment and plant all the seeds and if you go out and you look, they're either chewed off right at ground level or they're dug up."
Zink says he hasn't seen this many gophers since the 1990's but thanks to a dry winter and early spring the population has exploded.
Phil Merrill is a pest specialist with the Alberta government.
He says you can try and control them with poison but it likely won't help at this point.
"So if we put it out when the grass and forage is nice and green we get a poor kill so you have to get your bait out before the grass starts to grow and the grain starts to grow and that's in April," Merrill said.
If we have another warm, early spring, he says the rodents will be back again next year.
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