Smoke bomb new weapon in battle against gophers

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This article was published 02/04/2015 (3929 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

City hall is changing its arsenal in the fight against gophers.

City crews will be relying on sulphur smoke bombs to kill the scourge of parks and sports fields.

“It’s a lit product that you throw down the gopher hole, and it emits a sulphur gas and ends up asphyxiating the gophers,” said Dave Domke, manager of the city’s parks and open spaces.

Domke’s crews drew unwanted attention last summer when a dog became seriously ill following a visit to Little Mountain Park where it ingested a piece of the city’s then-preferred weapon of choice — an anti-coagulant poison.

Gopher holes — actually created by rodents known as the Richardson ground squirrel — in many parks and sports fields have become a major concern for city hall, where they pose a safety threat to runners and athletes.

“I’d be much happier with the city using (the smoke bombs), which really doesn’t affect the dogs, than the poison,” said Colin Lang, co-chairman of the Maple Grove Dog Club.

Lang said the city’s practice was to place the poison with only minimal warning to dog owners or the public, adding he hopes the city will provide better public warnings when crews deploy smoke bombs.

Domke said the problem is most severe in about a dozen parks and sports fields, and they had been employing the poison to kill the gophers. But the use of poison was suspended last summer following the incident at Little Mountain Park and Domke said it will not be used this year.

The city, he said, had conducted a pilot program last summer at John Blumberg Park using the sulphur smoke bomb, known commercially as the Giant Destroyer. It proved successful and will now be deployed at other areas.

“We’ve had incidents where people and dogs have experienced sprained legs because of the gopher holes,” Domke said. “If there is a concern, we have to try and control that problem.”

Crews will begin surveying the open fields — where the gophers have been a serious problem in the past — at the end of April and early May.

Domke said crews look for signs of fresh dirt around the holes — indications of new gopher activity. The sulphur smoke bombs will be dropped into the holes.

“We’re never going to eradicate or exterminate (the gophers),” Domke said. “We’re just trying to control them.”

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca