Managing Moles, Voles, and other Varmints

Our method of managing the rodent diggers on our property is to look at the big picture. We live among moles, deer, rabbits, hawks, eagles, roaming stoats, frogs, falcons, snakes, doves, wasps, sparrows, etc. They were here before we arrived, they’ll be here after we leave, and they live in natural balance.

If we spot a rattlesnake, we avoid that area for a few days. If a wasp gets in the house, we take it outside. Any spider lurking indoors who wasn’t nabbed by a bird or mouse gets a pass.

We “manage” by recognizing that we’re the intruders occupying their space for a brief time, and they’ll be here long after we’ve gone; we just get the privilege of watching them for awhile on their land, and it’s amazing.

My inclination is to recommend building some housing for predators like hawks and owls if you're able and have the space. It's a nice way to address the varmint population while also meeting the need of being good for the local ecosystem, though it works slowly.

Ways we have accidentally concentrated our vole population include

• Creating brush piles of wood chips and sticks

• Growing nasturtiums

• Growing Jerusalem artichokes (Helianthus tuberosus)

But doing a combination of all three intentionally seems to have drawn their attention from the majority of the yard that isn't gardens, and by giving open space between the vole magnet area and our gardens it increases the chances for one of their predators to keep their numbers in check.

Poison is really a shitty way to handle this problem. It's not just bad for our dogs, it's bad for wild predators as well, and (speculating) probably not good for the soil microbiome either. Also it's a pretty nasty way to go for the rodents.

The proper way to deal with moles is using blackhole traps. They take advantage of the fact that moles will try to block any light entering their tunnel. The trap has a hole at the end, so when inserted into their tunnel, the moles will want to plug it to turn out the light, when they enter the open end of the tube it springs the trap.

It takes a bit of luck and a bit of skill, sometimes you have to reset the traps multiple times before getting the mole.

I also wouldn't recommend ultrasonic repellers because we don't know what effect that type of shit has on other creatures, either.

Voles are trickier, though also less problematic. I would say get a cat.

We get a lot of voles which enjoy eating our garden and saplings. I've decent success by:

• garden: putting a wire mesh fence around it with 1/4" hardware cloth buried 4" underground
• trees: plastic protective tubes around the trunks and also keeping the grass/weeds around then cut short. Voles like the protection of tall grass.

For the same reason (dogs), I'm also against using any kind of poison to get rid of them.

I've had people recommend ultrasonic stakes that are supposed to repel them, but I haven't invested in any to try. Curious if anyone has any experience with them and would be willing to share.

The title reminds me of mousetrap Monday youtube channel 😆