Years ago in 2006 we offered to help humanely reduce the population and treat the ground squirrels and park for fleas. City said yes. We were successful reducing the population in 90% of the park but not right at Broadway. The problem is they sell food there which the tourists feed to the animals. This causes the population to explode. They will have more babies and more babies will survive to adulthood. There are no feed signs but people ignore them or destroy them. We lost all our of signs in just the first week. These were thick metal signs tightly screwed to posts. The homeless and locals also feed the ground squirrels. Even if people didn't feed them, there are plants and grass for them to eat. Before the food vendors they used to feed the homeless there who fed the squirrels. The squirrels have probably been there thousands of years.
We also tried to treat the park for fleas. The city and groundskeeper would only allow us to use an herbal spray which was almost as effective as salad dressing. They wouldn't allow us to set up hidden tubes with flea meds to treat the squirrels directly either for same reason. Their excuse was they didn't want anything that could be toxic to pets or humans. Obviously it would not have been toxic to ground squirrels, pets or humans. We use regular dog, cat flea meds on squirrels. They are proven safe.
We were using humane traps to trap, examine the squirrels and test the fleas of the ground squirrels. Homeless people destroyed our traps even though they were well hidden in the cactus. I was almost attacked a few times trying to get the homeless to stop feeding them. Some homeless are mentally ill or on substances which make them unpredictable. One tried to throw me off the bluff. Needless to say we didn't work with the city again because our hands were tied. We couldn't be effective without using our proven tools.
I wrote this article just so current people understand the situation. The city will either poison or gas them. Once they used humane traps to trap them. Then they were more humanely gassed and bodies fed to wildlife. We weren't involved in that program. If they really wanted to get rid of the ground squirrels there, they'd have to cement off the area. Ground squirrels won't stray more than 75 feet from their dirt burrow hole. They may have to cement off the area turning it into a huge deck due to erosion eventually.
The ground squirrels do not cause the erosion of the palisades bluffs. They are attracted to that type of softer soil for their burrows. The palisades have been eroding for millions of years. It happens all over the world even where they have no ground squirrels.
Some cute videos from today.
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