Strychnine program ‘doomed to fail’ says one producer

While agreeing it’s badly needed, a well-known producer in the MD of Willow Creek believes a program to eliminate the Richardson’s ground squirrel from farmer fields is doomed to fail.

Not only will be too late to help with the problem this year, but Maryanne Sandberg adds the time-limited emergency use of 2% strychnine also has too many restrictions.

“If you we were to go get gopher poison, you could hire a 4-H club and do it, now you can’t. It has to be the landowner on title,” Sandberg stipulated.

“You (also) have to retrieve all the carcasses. Good luck in doing that. They die in the hole, some of them. I’d like to see retrieve that.”