Wildlife advocates say Ottawa’s authorization of the emergency use of strychnine in Alberta and Saskatchewan is a disappointing reversal of a previous decision rejecting its use.
“It’s really not the right approach, and it’s a surprising approach because it’s the complete opposite of a one-health approach, which we would have hoped that the government would be utilizing more,” said Lia Laskaris, CEO of Animal Alliance of Canada.
On Monday, Health Canada approved a revised, joint emergency-use request for strychnine to address what it says is millions of dollars worth of damage caused by an infestation of Richardson’s ground squirrels — known colloquially as gophers — after the Pest Management Regulatory Agency rejected an earlier proposal in February.
The approval authorizes the controlled and time-limited emergency use of the poison in the two prairie provinces until November 2027.
The regulatory agency banned the use of two-per-cent liquid strychnine two years ago, citing risks to wildlife species — especially species-at-risk like the swift fox and burrowing owl — that can consume poisoned carcasses.
Laskaris said while she understands the concerns farmers have about the ground squirrels destroying their crops, the risk to non-target species should be the primary consideration.
“There are a lot of animals who are poisoned from consuming these [strychnine] baits, and they end up miles away from the bait sites,” she said. “A lot of them are not recorded.”
In a written statement Tuesday, national animal advocacy group Animal Justice said it is “deeply disappointed” by Health Canada’s decision, calling it an “unscientific reversal of its own earlier findings that the poison poses unacceptable risks to animals and the environment.”
“There is no safe or environmentally acceptable way to poison animals with strychnine,” Alexandra Pester, Animal Justice’s Calgary-based staff lawyer, said in the statement. “It is an indiscriminate poison that causes excruciating pain to all animals who ingest it.”
In a statement Monday, Health Canada said the provinces’ revised request contained additional measures to reduce environmental risk to “an acceptable level.”
“This decision means that many prairie farmers will have another tool back in their toolbox for gopher control,” RJ Sigurdson, Alberta’s minister of agriculture and irrigation, said in a statement Tuesday.
Sigurdson said Alberta is working to procure supply of the poison and implement the agreement as soon as possible.
“We remain committed to finding pest management alternatives that will protect both our agriculture sector and rural infrastructure from the impacts of agricultural pests,” he said.
David Marit, Saskatchewan’s minister of agriculture, expressed the same sentiment in a statement Monday, adding he hopes to see strychnine permanently reinstated as a gopher control tool.
Ruiping Lui, a conservation specialist with the Alberta Wilderness Association, said the organization was disappointed by the decision, adding there are other solutions to controlling gopher populations that don’t require poison.
One alternative is encouraging predator control, she said, as badgers, coyotes and ferruginous hawks can help keep ground squirrel populations in check.
“Ferruginous hawks, especially if they’re encouraged to nest in an area, most of their diet will be ground squirrels,” Luo explained.
Other methods can include building fences and limiting spillage of food attractants, such as grain, she said.
“Our main problem with pesticides is that, long term, you just have to keep using it,” Luo said.
“Especially something like strychnine, if you’re using that pesticide and it’s affecting not just the ground squirrels but also the predators that usually keep them under control, then you have less predators the next year, so there’s even less of a control, potentially, for the ground squirrels.”
Colleen Cassady St. Clair, a biological sciences professor at the University of Alberta, said another lesser-known alternative involves injecting either carbon monoxide or dioxide into ground squirrel burrows, causing them to fall asleep and die.
“That would be a technique that would have no by-catch of other animals, it would have no lasting effects of poison in the soil or the water, and it would be humane,” she said.
St. Clair said farmers are in a tough position, as they shoulder the primary cost of losing their crops.
“Until we have a little bit more sharing of the cost, I think we need to be a bit more accepting of the solutions that people find to solve this problem,” she said.
Still, St. Clair said ground squirrels play an important role in the ecosystem, and she hopes the emergency strychnine use will be a temporary measure while other options are explored.
“Probably that’ll mean, as it usually does in human-wildlife conflict, a reduction in the problem, not a complete solution for the problem,” she said. “So we humans, I think, have to accept some cost of sharing the planet with other species.”
