Let nature decide pocket gophers’ fate

According to scientists, somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 living creatures disappear from the face of the earth every year. It’s called extinction, and it’s nature’s way of maintaining a balance in the earth’s creature population. We have never solved the question as to why Mother Nature performs this cleansing of species, but, though mysterious, it seems to have worked.

Another mystery that arises is that, although it’s never nice to fool with Mother Nature, there are segments of earth’s human population who would like to do just that. Hard as it is to fathom, there are tribes among the humans who honestly believe they can interfere with the extinction process.

Common sense and history would clearly indicate that their efforts are futile. But with a “we’ve-gotta-keep-trying” sense of battle, the do-gooders, with help from our misguided media, are getting plenty of publicity.

Horrible example: In Thurston County, efforts to save the spotted owl and the pocket gopher! Animal lovers, guided by their attachment to wild life, have not even considered the impact their efforts would have on humans. In Washington, literally thousands of acres of farm land and forest sit idle because they’ve been condemned as unusable except as homes to owls and gophers.

We decided to sell a 9.6 acre piece of our property. There are no pocket gophers on that property, but Washington requires us to prove that we have no gophers by having a contractor run a series of $2,000 tests to provide that proof.

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This story was originally published January 15, 2016 at 11:35 AM with the headline "Let nature decide pocket gophers’ fate."