Why Poisons Are Not In My Bag For Gophers and Moles

Dear Readers,
Here is a recent letter a concerned parent sent me:
"Hi Mr. Wittman...I called you today in regards to my daughter's gopher problem in her suburban backyard in Danville, CA. A local pest company tried by putting strychnine granules in the tunnels only to have the gophers push it back out. Not a good answer to the problem since she has two toddlers who love their back yard. The kids were playing in the soft dirt and the green granules were in the soft dirt apparently not placed in the correct tunnels. Being a concerned grandmother, I'm all in favor of trapping the rodents while the kids are not home. The backyard has actually been off limits since this all became a very scary POISONED play yard. She has three of four new mounds a day."
This is not the first time I have heard of this and I know it won't be the last. I have heard many stories of birds eating poisoned grain and dying right on the lawn and many stories of pets and wildlife (especially owls) that have been poisoned by mistake. This is mostly due to a lack of understanding about the nature of the target animals and the poisons themselves.
Today, professionals usually use for gophers a tablet that turns into a gas called Phostoxin. When applied to a fresh gopher mound it is usually very effective. You need a license to apply it and the secondary or accidental kill rate is very low. The applicator is usually the one in danger but I have heard of accidental poisonings with this material also including the death of a child. But in terms of residual poison left in the ground, there is none.
Poisons that are available to non professionals, like strychnine and anticoagulants are much more dangerous to kids, pets and wildlife. First the strychnine baits are usually coated over seeds, usually milo, a common round bird seed and colored bright green or green blue. This seed flows easily from dispensers like funnels and poison metering probes. When put into a gopher tunnel it is usually fatal but sometimes the gopher pushes it back up out of the tunnel. When used for moles it is completely ineffective as moles or carnivores and do not eat seeds so they usually push it back to the surface. Birds are the ones who usually end up eating it but so do other seed eating mammals like mice, etcetera. But as in the letter above young children see it as candy and may eat it. So my advice is to stay away from poisons and especially strychnine.
Antocoagulants are the next most popular catagory and they are fatal only after the target animal eats the grain or raison coated bait for several days, allowing the poison to build up in the animals body until internal bleading causes death. Though not as dangerous to a non target animal ingesting one dose, this can be a problem when predators like hawks and owls eat the poisoned animal. There is a lot of documented evidence of secondary poisoning of wildlife.
So, I say trapping is the best strategy and I have developed methods that can be as effective or more effective than poisons. I offer this information to you on my website and can supply you with the tools to achieve gopher, mole and other small animal control easily and without endangering other animals, people or even our water sheds and marine environments.
Thanks for listening,
Thomas