Don Brunell

A small critter is causing big problems in the South Puget Sound. It’s called the Mazama pocket gopher.

Some 100,000 pocket gophers inhabit prairie lands throughout northern California, Oregon and Washington. Our state is the northernmost part of its range, where separate populations are scattered in pockets throughout the area, including Thurston and Pierce counties.

Last December, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) proposed to list several subspecies of the Mazama pocket gopher in Washington as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

Why should we care? Because t...