Kamloopsians share the land with [expletive deleted] marmots

By Duncan McGregor

The beginning of spring has always been a double-edged sword for Brett Martin, general manager of the now-defunct Aberdeen Golf Links in Kamloops, B.C. While the warm weather once signalled the joy of another golf season, it also heralded the beginning of another grinding round in a perennially-recurring battle against marmots.

“The problem is quite large, even with all of the homes around us,” said Martin.

Every March at the end of their hibernation cycle, marmots erupted from the links, drawn to the course as an oasis of green in Kamloops’ residential neighbourhoods. This annual surge of activity often caused appreciable and costly damage to fairways and other areas of the course.

Those familiar with marmots will know the trials that filling marmot-holes can bring.

“We’ve plugged some of their holes so that they don’t come out, and then we find that they’ve moved 25-pound rocks out of the way like nothing,” said Martin.

The greens crews of Aberdeen Hills Golf links no longer have to contend with the frustration marmots on one’s property can bring. The facility announced its closure in late October of 2011 to create a city park. Now the furry little creatures are the city's problem.

Brent Bylsma, owner of Kamloops’ Culture Care Landscaping, Inc., said residential lawns and gardens can also suffer from marmot activity.

“It’s a little difficult when they’re in the middle of a nice, mowed lawn and you’ve got a creature coming up from there,” said Bylsma. “Not to mention that some of our annual plantings get eaten up by marmots in the springtime.”

Coping with marmots: Try a little co-existence

As marmot season begins, so begins the search for strategies that people can use to help them co-exist with their marmot neighbours. These strategies vary from relatively genteel methods like flooding burrows to more proactive measures like relocation and even extermination.

“There are different ways of dealing with them,” said Martin. “Sometimes it’s just relocating them, and sometimes you just wait it out until they go back into hibernation.”

Aberdeen Hills Golf Links staff had two tried-and-true techniques they swore by to help move unwanted marmots along. When a hole appeared in the links’ fairways, Martin said, the first line of defence was to plug their holes. Often, says Martin, this forced the marmot to dig in a new location.

Another trick employed by the greens crew at the Aberdeen Hills Golf Links was flooding marmot burrows.

“We’ve put sprinklers in there, not to kill them or drown them, but just to get them out of the way,” said Martin. “When we flush them out with the water, as soon as you start the water you can see them coming out from another hole to go start elsewhere.”

This technique, says Martin, can keep marmots out of a given area for the whole season. Apparently, they don't like getting wet.

Both Martin and Bylsma recommend co-existing with marmots, instead of trying to remove them from the property. This may require homeowners to adopt a different attitude about landscape esthetics.

“Instead of trying to keep a manicured lawn when they keep digging it up,” said Bylsma, “I would put a rockscape around it or something like that, and let them live there.”

If not co-existence, then what?

Sometimes marmots won’t get the hint that their presence is no longer tolerated. When hole-blocking and flooding won’t do the trick, it may be time to consider more permanent measures – relocation or extermination.

Relocation may sound appealing, since live-trapping the marmot and sending it on its way seems more humane than extermination. This mercy, though, may be no mercy at all.

“With a lot of these sorts of animal-mitigation things, it just doesn’t work. I always tell my students that it would be like someone grabbing you and you wake up somewhere in New York City,” said Karl Larsen, professor of wildlife ecology and management at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, B.C.

“What are the chances that you’re going to be able to settle down and make a go of it right away?”

Larsen said studies show relocation usually results in either the death of the animal or its return to the problem area.

Even when animals are located to areas that seem a perfect match, the relocated animal has to compete with local, well-established animals of the same species, which may not be keen to share.

“Say you’ve got a problem beaver and you trap it and you dump it somewhere,” said Larsen. “Well, if it’s a great place for a beaver to live, then there’s probably a beaver there. And it’s probably the same with marmots.” 

While not advocated by either Bylsma or Martin, euthanasia may be the only alternative guaranteed to rid a yard of marmots.

Extermination companies specialize in humanely euthanizing problem animals without endangering those who live on the property.

Do marmots suffer a bad rap?

In fact, Bylsma said, many homeowners wrongly accuse marmots of damaging their yards. He says marmots usually nest on hilly areas surrounding yards and rarely wander onto lawns to dig.

If you’re finding holes and piles of dirt on your lawn, the culprit may not be a marmot. B.C.’s Southern Interior is home to many burrowing animals. Moles, other species of ground squirrel and pocket gophers all call the area their home, and all are likely to cause damage to lawns and property, said Larsen.

“There’s more damage from mice than anything,” said Bylsma. “Mice like to eat irrigation wiring and that causes issues. But the marmots don’t usually do that.”

Larsen suggested homeowners remember that having marmots in your little slice of paradise means your slice is still alive and part of the surrounding ecosystem. It shows that human intrusion has refrained from sterilizing one more corner of the globe, and that you are lucky enough to enjoy nature's diversity.

“I like seeing them (marmots) in Kamloops," said Larsen. "It means that there’s still some wildlife and that we’re still trying to co-exist somehow,” said Larsen. “But then, I’m not the one who has to take care of the grounds.”