While gophers and groundhogs are often mistaken for one another, there are key differences in their size, appearance, ...

As pocket gophers dig their tunnels, they have to do something with the soil they are excavating, so they push it out via holes in their tunnel to form mounds. These mounds vary in shape from ...

Over a few months, she set about 500 hundred traps and has caught 60 pocket gophers. “I thought I was killing it, then I saw another hole … caught three little babies.

California Department of Fish and Wildlife classifies pocket gophers as non-game animals. This means that you don’t need a license to trap them and you can control them in any legal manner.

Pocket gophers grow to between 5 to 14 inches in length and use their strong front claws for digging holes and creating a tunnel system. It pushes soil to the surface to form mounds.

Striped gophers -- actually ground squirrels -- sometimes are caught in the traps, but they don't dig the holes themselves and they typically earn only half the bounty of a pocket gopher.

Gophers favor bulbs and roots. Voles go for grass, but also gnaw on shrubs and stems nearest their holes and runways. Moles, which are rarely if ever seen, prefer non-plant food.

Earlier this week the federal U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided to list the tiny Mazama pocket gopher as protected under the Endangered Species Act. But the Freedom Foundation’s Trent ...