Pest control at Brent Kennedy Elementary School and Mount Sentinel Secondary School in South Slocan was carried out this week to eliminate gophers from the fields.
School District 8’s director of operations Bruce MacLean said the number of holes created by the critters have been increasing over the last couple years.
“It’s a safety issue for the students and the staff, where the gopher holes and mounds are all over the fields,” he said. “They stayed along the perimeter of the field for a long time. But in the last [two to 10] years they moved right into the fields and it’s dangerous.”
In April, a Cranbrook company hired by the district applied chlorophacinone, a poison used to control rats, to treat the fields. The second and last round of application was completed Tuesday.
MacLean said the fields only need to be restricted to families and pets for 24 hours after the poison is used.
He added both schools, a daycare next to Brent Kennedy, PAC groups and the Regional District of Central Kootenay, which owns Campbell Field adjacent to Mount Sentinel, were consulted prior to the work.
@tyler_harper | tyler.harper@nelsonstar.com
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