Mazama pocket gopher (Thomomys mazama).
This week’s crawly is a critter most folks know a little bit about, but few have heard about the benefits this critter brings. Meet the Mazama Pocket Gopher (Thomomys mazama).
Benefits? Gopher? Yes, and we’ll get to those in a bit. Oregon has five species of pocket gopher. Generally referred to as simply “gophers.” The “pocket” refers to their external fur-lined face pockets which allow them to carry food, nesting materials etc.
The Mazama pocket occurs from the Columbia River to the California-Oregon border in the Coast Range and along the coast. It also occurs in the Cascade Range, with eastward extensions to Mosier, Paulina Lake and Merrill in Klamath County.
The total population of Mazama pocket gophers is thought to exceed 100,000 most of those in Oregon.
While generally considered a “pest” if they show up in yards or gardens, Mazama pocket gophers are beneficial overall, especially in their preferred prairie habitat.
The Mazama pocket gopher is important to its prairie ecosystem. Each gopher is capable of turning over 3-7 tons of soil per acre per year. Their presence is beneficial for plant diversity, with one study showing a range of 5-48% higher diversity as a result of their presence.
The gopher burrows are also used by many frogs, toads, small mammals, lizards and insects.
Mazama pocket gophers are medium-sized (5-6 inches), and rage in color from light brown to almost black. They have short necks, powerful limbs, long claws and tiny ears and
While their vision is poor, their highly sensitive nearly hairless tails may assist in navigation through tunnels. Their diet includes a wide variety of plant material, including leafy vegetation, succulent roots, shoots and tubers.
Mazama pockets rarely come completely out of their burrows, though they do disperse above ground when young go searching for their own territory. Mazama are very territorial, so you won’t find huge colonies of them as you might envision.
Mazama only have one litter of 3 or 4 pups per year, unlike other gopher species who will have multiple litters. This fits with their territorial tendencies, reducing odds of turf wars.
Because they do live mostly underground, Mazama gophers even have a special way to deal with waste: they use a tiny den in their tunnel system as a latrine and when the time comes, they block off the tunnel, which in turn enriches the soil with nutrients.
While Oregon populations are secure, one of the Washington subspecies is federally protected and they even have a relocation program. Since 2006, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has relocated over 332 pocket gophers to Wolf Haven’s prairie from development sites where they aerate the rich prairie soils and to prepare open soil for native plant seed germination.
