I blame anti-life religion (and Alberta) Again. This cowardice by the Carney cons sickens and infuriates me. Fucking religion.
@ryankbrook.bsky.social:
This is the area where strychnine will be used in Saskatchewan- expect to see dead pet dogs+a wide range of of dead wildlife killed during the “responsible“ use of this highly unethical poison.
Be careful with pets and children! Strychnine also kills humans in the most brutally painful way possible.
A few years ago I went down a very dark rabbit hole (no pun intended) about strychnine and saw youtube videos of people and animals poisoned with strychnine and it was even more horrible than you’d think. It still haunts my nightmares.
ABSOLUTELY UNBELIEVABLE.
what a total failure here. Many (including me) fought hard to see strychnine banned.
This is disgusting.
@evoneuro.bsky.social:
Another pathetic move by the Canadian government.There is no justification for using strychnine on ground squirrels. Further CBC made no attempt to contact biologists or veterinarians to discuss the dangers of strychnine.
Alberta #Canada
@nimblenewt.bsky.social:
Infestation? It’s their home! Not to mention swift foxes and all the other creatures they are enmeshed with. Willful stupidity.
I think wilful cruelty. SK and AB are filled with cruel people, bible belt influence
Ryan Brook, PhD. Chairman of the Boar @ryankbrook.bsky.social:
Agreed.
@saskajanet.bsky.social:
It’s shameful
@klifnotshort.bsky.social:
Saw this on FB, lots of folks saying the gophers go down hole to die so no danger to predators . … I guess that’s what they tell themselves to sleep at night .until they get to church on sunday and beg forgiveness for their sadistic mass killings. farmers know damned well the harm and suffering strychnine causes. I watch ground squirrels on my land and that of my neighbours, they spend one hell of a lot of time on the surface, and come over to my place from neighbours regularly. One of my dogs nearly died from eating poisoned ground squirrels (I don’t use poison, not even for mice)
@ryankbrook.bsky.social:
There was an interesting study in the vet school here at the university of Saskatchewan that found strychnine poisoned pet dogs and diverse wildlife so yeah that is a bold faced lay to say they die underground and don’t affect other species. Many were found AFTER the ban was implemented.
Wildlife advocates ‘disappointed’ by feds’ decision to allow strychnine, Health Canada said Alberta, Saskatchewan’s revised request contained measures to reduce environmental risk by Kelsea Arnett, CBC News, Mar 31, 2026
Wildlife advocates say Ottawa’s authorization of the emergency use of strychnine in Alberta and Saskatchewan is a disappointing reversal of a previous decision rejecting its use.
“It’s really not the right approach, and it’s a surprising approach because it’s the complete opposite of a one-health approach, which we would have hoped that the government would be utilizing more,” said Lia Laskaris, CEO of Animal Alliance of Canada.
On Monday, Health Canada approved a revised, joint emergency-use request for strychnine to address what it says is millions of dollars worth of damage caused by an infestation of Richardson’s ground squirrels — known colloquially as gophers — after the Pest Management Regulatory Agency rejected an earlier proposal in February.
The approval authorizes the controlled and time-limited emergency use of the poison in the two prairie provinces until November 2027.
The regulatory agency banned the use of two-per-cent liquid strychnine two years ago, citing risks to wildlife species — especially species-at-risk like the swift fox and burrowing owl — that can consume poisoned carcasses.
Laskaris said while she understands the concerns farmers have about the ground squirrels destroying their crops, the risk to non-target species should be the primary consideration.
“There are a lot of animals who are poisoned from consuming these [strychnine] baits, and they end up miles away from the bait sites,” she said. “A lot of them are not recorded.”
LISTEN | An argument for preventing strychnine use in Alberta:
Calgary Eyeopener9:33The argument for keeping the current restrictions to strychnine use on farmlandFollowing a conversation we had with a High River farmer on yesterday’s show, hear an argument in support of keeping the controversial pesticide strychnine off of Alberta farmland.
In a written statement Tuesday, national animal advocacy group Animal Justice said it is “deeply disappointed” by Health Canada’s decision, calling it an “unscientific reversal of its own earlier findings that the poison poses unacceptable risks to animals and the environment.”Religion is destroying every thing non human; the religious hate science
“There is no safe or environmentally acceptable way to poison animals with strychnine,” Alexandra Pester, Animal Justice’s Calgary-based staff lawyer, said in the statement. “It is an indiscriminate poison that causes excruciating pain to all animals who ingest it.”
Proposal addressed environmental concerns, federal government says
In a statement Monday, Health Canada said the provinces’ revised request contained additional measures to reduce environmental risk to “an acceptable level.” Fucking impossible, that’s con talk. There is not acceptable level when it comes to ignorance and strychnine
“This decision means that many prairie farmers will have another tool back in their toolbox for gopher control,” RJ Sigurdson, Alberta’s minister of agriculture and irrigation, said in a statement Tuesday.Douche fucker, happily helping farmers slaughter ground squirrels and listed species in the most brutal way possible.
- Emergency use of banned strychnine needed to counter ‘exponential damage’ done by gophers, advocates sayFucking lazy selfish liars.
- Alberta government calls for strychnine ban reversal to fight ‘destructive force’ of gophers
Sigurdson said Alberta is working to procure supply of the poison and implement the agreement as soon as possible.
“We remain committed to finding pest management alternatives that will protect both our agriculture sector and rural infrastructure from the impacts of agricultural pests,” he said.
David Marit, Saskatchewan’s minister of agriculture, expressed the same sentiment in a statement Monday, adding he hopes to see strychnine permanently reinstated as a gopher control tool.Another douche fucker anti-life politico.
Non-poison alternatives
Ruiping Lui, a conservation specialist with the Alberta Wilderness Association, said the organization was disappointed by the decision, adding there are other solutions to controlling gopher populations that don’t require poison.
One alternative is encouraging predator control, she said, as badgers, coyotes and ferruginous hawks can help keep ground squirrel populations in check.
“Ferruginous hawks, especially if they’re encouraged to nest in an area, most of their diet will be ground squirrels,” Luo explained.
Other methods can include building fences and limiting spillage of food attractants, such as grain, she said.
“Our main problem with pesticides is that, long term, you just have to keep using it,” Luo said.
“Especially something like strychnine, if you’re using that pesticide and it’s affecting not just the ground squirrels but also the predators that usually keep them under control, then you have less predators the next year, so there’s even less of a control, potentially, for the ground squirrels.”
Need to shoulder cost together, expert says
Colleen Cassady St. Clair, a biological sciences professor at the University of Alberta, said another lesser-known alternative involves injecting either carbon monoxide or dioxide into ground squirrel burrows, causing them to fall asleep and die.
“That would be a technique that would have no by-catch of other animals, it would have no lasting effects of poison in the soil or the water, and it would be humane,” she said.
St. Clair said farmers are in a tough position, as they shoulder the primary cost of losing their crops.
“Until we have a little bit more sharing of the cost, I think we need to be a bit more accepting of the solutions that people find to solve this problem,” she said.
Still, St. Clair said ground squirrels play an important role in the ecosystem, and she hopes the emergency strychnine use will be a temporary measure while other options are explored.As long as Carney’s top dog, I expect it’ll be permanent.
“Probably that’ll mean, as it usually does in human-wildlife conflict, a reduction in the problem, not a complete solution for the problem,” she said.
“So we humans, I think, have to accept some cost of sharing the planet with other species.”
With files from Rukhsar Ali
@marcofesta.bsky.social:
When Australians poison dingos, they call them wild dogs.
When Canadians poison ground squirrels, they call them gophers.
Awful stuff, will kill hawks, foxes etc. that eat poisoned squirrels.
Weirdly, Health Canada claims that there is a ‘safe level’ of strychnine
@evoneuro.bsky.social:
I emailed the CBC journalist about the article, a first for me. The article was poorly researched: zero attempt to contact a biologist or veterinarian. They didn’t even mention that Montana banned strychnine for ground squirrels years ago
@richardsmiriam1.bsky.social:
This is a dreadful decision but human convenience trumps environmental considerations at Health Canada. And I use the word ’trump’ advisedly.
Ottawa authorizes emergency use of strychnine in Alberta, Saskatchewan to address gopher infestation, Pest Management Regulatory Agency banned strychnine 2 years ago by Rukhsar Ali, CBC News · Posted: Mar 30, 2026
Ottawa is authorizing the controlled and time-limited emergency use of strychnine in Alberta and Saskatchewan to address millions of dollars worth of damage caused by an infestation of Richardson’s ground squirrels, known colloquially as gophers.
Alberta and Saskatchewan submitted a revised, joint emergency-use request to Health Canada last week, after an earlier proposal had been rejected by the Pest Management Regulatory Agency in February.
The agency banned the use of strychnine two years ago, arguing that the substance poses risks to other wildlife species — that could include species-at-risk such as the swift fox and burrowing owl — that consume poisoned carcasses.
The provinces’ approved request included additional restrictions and mitigations measures to lower the environmental risk of the rodent poison “to an acceptable level,” Health Canada said in a news release issued Monday.Why are we not being told what those mitigations are? Because they’re useless, a con lie?
“This is incredible news for producers across the Prairies,” RJ Sigurdson, Alberta’s minister of agriculture and irrigation, wrote in a post on X.And terrible news for life.
“This is a huge win for our agriculture industry, ensuring our producers have the tools they need to better manage their operations and continue providing high-quality products.”??High quality?? Ya, shit slathered in roundup and or other toxic brew. You couldn’t pay me to eat it.
Under the Pest Control Products Act, Ottawa is authorizing the two provinces to register strychnine under an emergency registration until November 2027.
Farmers across Alberta and Saskatchewan have been calling for the opportunity to use strychnine again to manage swelling populations of Richardson’s ground squirrels. The pests target a variety of crops.
Strychnine, in two per cent liquid form, was the go-to gopher control solution on farms in the two provinces before the federal government began phasing out its use to manage the pests in 2020. In 2024, it banned it outright due to environmental risks posed by the poison.
- Camrose County seeks data on agricultural damage from Richardson’s ground squirrels
- Sask. hunting organization offers to put gophers in the crosshairs for farmers
“Saskatchewan producers have been clear about the challenges they face in managing gophers with the limited tools currently available,” David Marit, Saskatchewan’s minister of agriculture, said in a news release.
“We’re pleased to see the emergency use request granted as a practical monstrous inhumane opportunity for producers to demonstrate how strychnine can help protect their crops and pastures from continued damagewhile greedily wiping out other life.”
Wade Nelson, a farmer near High River, Alta., said he’s seen 170 acres of his canola crops wiped out from a gopher infestation. He applauded the government’s decision to authorize strychnine again for emergency use.
“It’s been a really big issue for us and for a lot of our community and across, well, Alberta and Saskatchewan … I mean, they’re just a devastating problem for us,” he said.I bet caused by the asshats themselves using strychnine for decades, wiping out vital predators of ground squirrels
“It’s been a really big struggle. So losing strychnine as an effective tool was a tough pill to swallow. There just isn’t another logical, safe alternative for the management of it, and so that’s why this is a great thing to have.”
Nelson said he would like to see the authorization extend beyond 2027.Killer religions always win; I bet catholic Carney make it permanent, inhumane fucker that he is. If there is a god, he’s furious
He said he hopes that producers, working with municipalities, can prove “that we can use this product safely and effectively so that we don’t have to keep kind of, you know, [being] constantly on the knife edge of whether or not we’re going to be able to continue that.”
Lynette Brown:
This seems purely a business decision where there is very little compassion seen towards the animals affected. I understand gopher (and as someone else pointed out, badger) holes can be problematic. My main concern is the lack of compassion these farmers appear to be showing for the animals directed and indirectly involved. There are multiple other methods available to control gophers without having to use a poison that causes an agonizing, prolonged death and has a high risk of non-target species consumption and contamination of the soil and water.
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