How Much Damage Can One Gopher Do?

If you’ve recently seen a gopher in your yard or near your home, you might be wondering if it is something you should be concerned about. The answer to that is an emphatic "yes". A gopher in the yard can mean serious trouble. These rodents are a plague throughout Ventura and Los Angeles Counties. They cause extensive damage annually and create a lot of frustration for homeowners throughout California and beyond. 

They are bigger than a mouse, smaller than a woodchuck, and look like a miniature beaver. The most common species in our area is the Botta’s Pocket Gopher, Thomomys bottae. They can grow anywhere from a few inches long to over a foot. Their fur color can vary greatly as well, but they are typically brown and a shade that likely matches the color of your soil. The “pocket” they are named for is a real physical characteristic. They have long, deep pouches that store and transport food along their cheeks. They are stout, have strong, powerful legs, broad feet with long, curved claws, and four chisel-like incisors that don’t stop growing. They dig with their feet and teeth, and their digging activity is non-stop and year-round; they do not hibernate.

Their burrows are elaborate, massive constructions. They have numerous interconnected tunnels going as deep as 10 feet underground and branching outwards for hundreds of feet. They spend most of their lives underground, so if you’ve spotted one topside, it’s a rare occurrence. You are much more likely to notice signs of their burrowing in your landscape long before you set eyes on the animal. Pocket gophers can make several large mounds in a single day, which look horseshoe or crescent-shaped when viewed from above. The mound opening is usually off to one side and usually plugged.

They are solitary, territorial, and aggressive. If you’ve seen one, there probably is just one. They like to claim about an acre of property as their own and aggressively chase away other gophers, animals, and people. (And yes, they bite if they feel threatened.)

They reach sexual maturity after only a year, and a female can have multiple litters in a year, averaging 4 or 5 pups. After about a month, those offspring are shooed off their mother’s property, but you can bet they are still in the neighborhood. If a gopher’s burrow becomes vacant, another furry relative will likely come along soon to claim the space. Their appetite is voracious, and they eat when they are not digging or sleeping. They consume as much as 60% of their body weight in vegetation daily, eating plants, grass, trees, shrubs, flowers, tubers, seedlings, and more. They are also likely to start at the roots, so the damage is done before you realize it.

Believe it or not, recent scientific studies show that pocket gophers exhibit bioluminescence under UV light and are not alone. However, it’s a pretty short list where mammals are concerned. Flying squirrels and opossums also glow under UV light. Despite this interesting factoid, we don’t recommend you black-light them. Instead, you should black-list them.

Gophers are one of the most destructive rodents; a single, small one can displace as much as a ton of dirt within a year. The animal can riddle your landscape with unsightly ridges and holes, rendering it unstable and vulnerable to collapse. The tunneling may be underground, but that activity is often just beneath the top layer of your grass. If left unchecked, a gopher can turn a lush, green landscape into a barren brown wasteland in a short time.

They also cause problems with drainage, irrigation, plumbing, electrical wires, foundations, driveways, and much more. They have been known to chew through pipes and cables, and sometimes even cement and stone. They are furry little demolition experts, no less skillful in the way they manipulate their underground environment than the way that beavers expertly direct water.

Although tracing an illness directly to gophers is rare, they are susceptible to diseases that rodents carry and transmit, including leptospirosis, hantavirus, rabies, and more. They’ve also been linked to monkeypox, which has been in the news lately. They can carry and transmit parasites like fleas, ticks, lice, mites, and worms. If these animals are in your yard, you and your pets may also be at risk.

The worst thing you can do if you spot or suspect that you have one in your yard is nothing. The best thing you can do is contact the experienced professionals at 101 Gopher & Pest Control. There’s a reason why “gopher” is in our name, we are the very best control and removal experts in Ventura and Los Angeles Counties, and we are ready to assist you.