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By Nick Nielsen

Ministry of Ag notices population surge

Ground squirrels (not gophers) population risen this year

Sep 6, 2024 | 6:00 PM

All over Saskatchewan during the summer, people have been complaining about the amount of gophers they’ve been seeing this year. Surprisingly, what you are seeing is likely not a gopher, but actually a species of squirrel called the Richardson’s Ground Squirrel.

While the active season for the Richardson’s Ground Squirrel is done, you may still see the odd one running around. This is because some of the newborn and juvenile ground squirrels might be out looking for food, while the older ones are preparing for a winter hibernation.

“This is strictly anecdotal at this point,” said Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture’s provincial specialist on insect/vertebrate pests James Tansey. “Relative to last year, yeah, we certainly had a lot more reports and I’ve seen a lot more significant growth for damage in different parts of the province.”

According to Tansey, the most reports he’s received this year came from just north of Regina and south of Swift Current towards the US border, but realistically they are everywhere across the province, even in within city limits of Prince Albert. Because they spend so much of their time underground, warm weather in the spring when they are starting to out of hibernation usually leads to higher populations, but this year was different.

“The one thing that’s been a little bit confounding is looking at the effects of weather and a lot of the published accounts to this point indicate that cool, wet weather like we saw in the spring should result in diminished populations, and of course that’s not what we saw. So one thing that we’re hoping to do is to unravel some of the environmental conditions that are supporting or regulating the gopher population.”

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With Health Canada’s decision to ban the use of the pest control poison strychnine, the control of the ground squirrel population in Saskatchewan has become much tougher. The Saskatchewan Government did not support the decision to de-register strychnine, but ran tests in both Saskatchewan and Alberta in 2022 and 2023 to find suitable replacements, and both studies showed that timing was the most important thing.

“We found that the zinc phosphide products work very well. So those are commercially available, there’s also anti-coagulants that are commercially available as well. I think the thing that’s really important is timing and for growers or acre donors or whomever wants to control Richardson’s Ground Squirrels, they get out there before things green up because once they have an option to feed on something else, it’s more difficult to get them to take the bait. But if you do get the base out early in the season, you can inflict good control on those populations and keep them below a threshold where they’re going to cause damage. We’re not looking for eradication, we’re just looking for control.”

While people have grown used to calling them gophers, they are actually species of ground squirrel; the most common being the above-mentioned Richardson’s Ground Squirrel. Other species found in Saskatchewan include the Franklin’s Ground Squirrel, and the 13 Line Ground Squirrel.

Oddly enough, the misnaming of gophers and ground squirrels in Saskatchewan has carried over to other species in Saskatchewan.

“The one gopher species that we have is called Northern Pocket Gopher and everyone in Saskatchewan calls that moles. We don’t actually have moles in Saskatchewan. I realize this causes a bit of confusion, but yeah, what people call gophers are ground squirrels, what people call moles are actually gophers.”

With the increase in ground squirrel population even in some of the rural areas, there hasn’t been a noticeable increase in predators following them in.

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nick.nielsen@pattisonmedia.com