Ventura Poison-Free Alternative Gets Malibu Attention
Written by 991KBU on July 17, 2018
Back in Malibu … if your garden or lawn is getting eaten alive by burrowing squirrels and gophers … this may give you some ideas.
The flood control district in nearby Ventura County has switched over from rodent poison … to actively encouraging birds to eat the pests.
Big birds … like hawks and owls.
The Ventura County Watershed Protection District maintains 256 miles of channels and earthen levees … and gophers and squirrels were damaging the critical structures.
A single gopher can excavate as much as one ton of soil per year.
Poison was deployed … but that attracted opposition.
A test was made … using raptor perches.
These are poles with resting places for hawks and owls to perch on.
The test was done at Revolon Slough … near Las Posas Road … just west of Malibu.
Net result … the birds did as good a job as the poison … in preventing rodent damage to flood control dikes.
The Malibu city council has invited Ventura County officials to next week’s city council meeting … to share that lesson here in our gopher-plagued slice of paradise.
