Gophers vs. Voles

[Moose]

I had the opportunity last weekend to talk with Bill (BS Man about Palms) while eating lunch. One topic brought up was the burrowing critters you guys have out west. We don't have burrowing rodents that attack our palm roots here in South Florida. I would be very frustrated nursing a palm along for years to have these destructive guys erasing all that care in a very short period.

Just curious, which of the two do you out west consider the worse case sceario regarding damage to palms? The Gopher or the Vole?

Edited March 11, 2018 by Moose

[Chris Chance]

I haven't had any Voles here but did once trap a gopher in my garden. Surprisingly I didn't get any damage and it's been a year since I saw any signs of gophers here. Others aren't so lucky. 

[JubaeaMan138]

I have had both. I am surrounded by open fields and no homes around me . The gophers usually only attack my small area of grass I have and they are easy to catch . The voles on the other hand are only in a area that most of my stuff is to big for them to have any effect . But even worse than the gophers and voles is the rabbits and skunks. The rabbits love any new flush on any cycads and the skunks just make a horrible mess around your plants specially if you have recently spread a nice thick layer of mulch around your plants . Every other day I would go out the see these big craters in my mulch finally put a critter cam up and found out it was skunks. Since then I use a granular product i spread around a perimeter of the property that does a pretty good job at keeping rabbits skunks and lots of other things out of the property and for my prize stuff I have a spray that I apply to cycads once a quarter that drys on the leaves that you can't see and doesn't harm the plants they have since left everything alone . Stuff does smell pretty horrid for the first few days . 

[el-blanco]

I get gophers rarely.  When I do this MacAbee trap always gets them

took me 3 weeks to get this one.