Threatened gophers get new digs to call home

Residential development on remnant prairies of South Sound and Mazama pocket gophers don't mix.

When a grassy patch of prairie– land is bulldozed and graded for new home construction, it can be a death knell for the tiny, tenacious, underground burrowing gophers that live there.

Mazama pocket gophers are a state-listed threatened species and a candidate for the federal Endangered Species Act list, so developers are supposed to devise plans to protect them.

But oftentimes, the on-site management plans don't work as the gophers succumb to household pets, pesticides and habitat loss.

Looking for a new way to protect pocket gophers as their native habitat dwindles, The Nature Conservancy, state Department of Fish and Wildlife and Wolf Haven International have teamed up on a pocket gopher relocation program unparalleled in this state.

Home on the prairie

In the past few months, about 75 pocket gophers have been trapped live and moved from three development sites - one at the intersection of Rich Road and Yelm Highway and two south of the Olympia Regional Aiport in Tumwater - to 50 acres of mounded praireland at Wolf Haven north of Tenino.

"This is a unique opportunity to try something new," said Kelly McAllister, district wildlife biologist for DFW.

While Wolf Haven is best known as a sanctuary for wolves, officials there have been working with the conservancy for four years to restore native prairie by removing invasive plants and planting native ones.

"This fits right in with our prairie restoration goals," said Tami Williams, conservation director at Wolf Haven. She said Wolf Haven also is incorporating its prairie habitat into its environmental education programs.

It turns out the property didn't have any resident pocket gophers, said Eric Delvin, Thurston County project manager for the conservancy.

Time to move

Here's how pocket gopher relocation works.

The gopher trapping team consists of Fish and Wildlife's Mike Walker and Nature Conservancy AmeriCorps employee Lindsey Baris placing custom-built traps filled with carrots as bait into the gopher's burrow holes at the development sites.

Once enclosed in the small, rectangular traps, the gophers are transported to Wolf Haven. They're injected with a tiny tag under their skin, weighed - they tip the scales at a few hundred grams - and placed in 2-foot-deep holes dug in advance of their arrival.

"We pop them in, stuff some carrots behind them and put a screen over the hole," Delvin explained.

Averse to light, the gophers almost immediately plug their holes with dirt and begin burrowing around in a 100-square-foot area, coming together only to mate.

"They are really territorial and aggressive and spend most of their time underground," McAllister said.

They eat roots and grasses, stir up the soil and fall victim to such predators as red-tailed hawks, weasels and coyotes, McAllister said. Pocket gophers have a life expectancy of just 2 to 3 years.

Each tag carries a unique code that trackers can read with a hand-held electronic device. The tags will be used to monitor survival rates and dispersal.

The $12,000 gopher relocation program is funded by developers of the property where the gophers lived, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the conservancy.