Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hey I live in Southern California and were I just moved there are curently no snakes, but allot of rodents. I have a gopher problem thats ruining my big yard. I was thinking of letting go a midsized gopher snake down one of the holes and wait a month or two to see if any new holes pop up. Any ideas? Is it a good or bad idea? Will it work?

David

Tough call. You should never release a captive snake though, survival problems. Relocating may not be good either, as the snake will be "lost". Do you have lots of neighbors? They may not like the snake wandering the neighborhood and end up killing it. Most snakes have a 4 mile home radius or so so it probably wouldnt spend a lot of time on your lot.

Technically in California you are not allowed to relocate any native reptiles. You can't pick a snake up on one side of the road and relaease it on the other side. That's stretching it, but technically it is correct. You can't move snakes around. Of course, if you happened to collect a gophersnake in the area and were keeping it and it escaped from your house. Hmm. I don't see anything regarding escaped snakes. I'm surprised with the fact you say there are a lot of rodents in the area that there aren't any snakes. Keep in mind that releasing a snake will pollute the gene pool. I would use other means to rid your yard of gophers.

Terry Parks

>>Hey I live in Southern California and were I just moved there are curently no snakes, but allot of rodents. I have a gopher problem thats ruining my big yard. I was thinking of letting go a midsized gopher snake down one of the holes and wait a month or two to see if any new holes pop up. Any ideas? Is it a good or bad idea? Will it work?
>>
>>David