Article by F.E. “Jack” Putz
Root Farming Pocket Gophers Other than in Saturday morning cartoon carrot-pulling contests with denim overall-clad farmers and a more nefarious portrayal in the movie Caddyshack, few people ever catch a glimpse of a Southeastern pocket gopher (Geomys pinetis). Also appropriately known as ‘sandy mounders,’ gophers are fossorial root-eating rodents that individually excavate, maintain, and defend tunnel systems that can be up to three-hundred feet long. By turning over so much soil, they clearly qualify as ecosystem engineers, but it was previously not known why they work so hard to maintain such long tunnels. It is less clear what effects their tunneling, sand mounding, and root eating have on vegetation. Judging from the presence of sandy mounds on turf grass lawns it appears that this native herbivore is averse to exotics, but their species preferences remain to be determined. While I am fascinated with gophers and happily recall the
few times I witnessed them at work, the arsenal of available gopher eradication devices and techniques indicates that this appreciation is not widely shared. Perhaps gophers would garner more respect if people realized that the sand in those mounds was pushed and carried up from tunnels excavated two feet or so below the surface. Their tunnels are deep enough to not collapse even under horse hooves but are also far below the reach of the roots on which gophers depend for sustenance. This gopher story starts when Veronica Selden, then an undergraduate at University of Florida, and I were in a field near my house sitting and sweating on the edge of a massive hole we’d excavated to expose a gopher tunnel. Although she’d taken two botany classes with me, she stubbornly persisted in being more interested in animals, which is why we were armed with long-handled spades in the quest for a pocket gopher-related
Abundant and prominent pocket gopher mounds after a fire at Goldhead Branch State Park. Photo by Reed Noss. 12 ● Palmetto
Volume 41:1 ● 2025