Quiet pocket gophers dig up trouble

    According to G.W. Witmer and R.M. Engeman of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, pocket gophers are efficient “digging machines.” They spend the majority of their lives as subterranean rodents quietly living their lives in a closed burrow system until mating season, rearing their young or biting into a buried cable while seeking roots as their main food source.
    Without communication cables or electrical cables, where would we be? In the same silence that pocket gophers enjoyed before they conflicted with our world.
    The damage a pocket gopher can do extends way beyond communication or electrical cables, as if that were not enough. Here is a brief list of the damage they can do:
    —Pocket gophers are one of the most serious pests and threat to reforestation in North America according to Engeman and Witmer (2000).
    —In rangeland, their preferred diet is annual forbs/wildflowers and annual grasses.
    —Root gnawing and basal girdling, according to Sullivan and Hogue (1987), damage fruit trees such as apple, cherry and pear trees in the Pacific Northwest.
    —In Nebraska, yields declined in alfalfa as an economic loss of around $10 million per year. Other field crops that suffered economic loss were alfalfa hay, late successional perennial grasses and clovers.

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