Sask. farm group urges Ottawa to bring back strychnine for gopher control

WATCH: A Saskatchewan farm group is renewing its call for Ottawa to bring back strychnine.

A Saskatchewan farm group is renewing its call for Ottawa to bring back strychnine and says the federal agriculture minister’s support for an emergency exemption is encouraging.

The Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan says Richardson’s ground squirrels, commonly known as gophers, are increasing in number, causing millions of dollars in crop damage and creating burrows that can injure livestock.

“Gophers, even though they’re small, the damage that they’re doing is quite extensive,” said Bill Prybylski, president of APAS.

The Saskatchewan Crop Insurance Corporation says last year it paid about $10.6 million in gopher-related claims on roughly 123,000 acres, an area about twice the size of Saskatoon. The five-year average is $9.1 million on about 87,000 acres.

APAS says strychnine should be reinstated because current pesticides are more expensive and less effective.

“That’s certainly contributed to the gopher population exploding in some areas, particularly in the southwest,” Prybylski said.

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Strychnine, a once-common pesticide, was banned for use on Richardson’s ground squirrels in March 2023 and banned entirely last March. The product has long faced criticism for the risk it poses to wildlife.

“The poison stays in the system, even when the animal’s dead,” said Katie Castellarin, assistant director of Living Sky Wildlife Rehabilitation. “If the death isn’t instant, they’ll get hunted by another animal and that animal will get poisoned.”

Castellarin says the poison also causes an inhumane death.

“It affects the nervous system of an animal, and it causes painful spasms and seizures, and it’s not a very quick death,” she said.

At a committee meeting last month, federal Agriculture Minister Heath MacDonald said he would support an emergency exemption to use strychnine.

The Pest Management Regulatory Agency, which falls under Health Canada rather than Agriculture, would have the final say on an exemption.

Prybylski said multiple departments would need to work together to get an exemption approved, and said APAS is hoping for one before spring, when gophers begin breeding.