Method has taken heat from activists, but results at Sunset Park please officials
“To kill, you must know your enemy, and in this case my enemy is a varmint. And a varmint will never quit — ever. They’re like the Viet Cong — Varmint Cong. So you have to fall back on superior intelligence and superior firepower”
Clark County officials say they may finally be winning their long-running war against gophers in Sunset Park.
For decades, pocket gophers have pockmarked the park. Countless ankles have been twisted in their holes, and gnawed wiring at the park had to be repeatedly replaced. The gophers were driving parks maintenance people crazy — and driving people away from the sports fields, county officials say.
Kevin Parker, county park manager, says he has seen gophers standing on their hind legs in an attempt to bite county workers. Children bitten by the rodents had to get preventive rabies shots, he says.
County Commissioner Steve Sisolak, whose district includes Sunset Park, says he was told “kids had been bitten when they stuck their hands in the holes”.
All of that is why five years ago the county resorted to the groundskeeper’s version of the nuclear option, the Rodenator.
County park maintenance crews own four of the metal lance-like devices, which cost $1,900 to $2,700 each. They use them to set off oxygen-propane explosions in the gopher burrows. Each Rodenator uses about five to seven gallons of propane per week, which adds up to 300 to 400 gallons a year.
