Wanted: dead or alive! Pocket gophers are under siege in Brookings County, what with the doubling of the bounty on their heads, and some may have to take up arms for personal protection. This gun-toting "attack gopher" is a World Wide Web photo-illustration .

Gopher hunters in Brookings County will now have twice as much motivation for snuffing out the furry little rodents, because the price on their heads has just doubled.

The Brookings County Commission on Tuesday raised the bounty for pocket gophers from $1 to $2 after the Brookings County Weed and Pest Board recommended the increase to encourage varmint hunters.

"We're trying to get a little more excitement towards trapping these little fellers," said Commissioner Alan Gregg, who represents the commission on the weed and pest board. He said local townships and two utility companies would continue to share the cost of the bounties with Brookings County.

They may be cuddly looking little animals, but pocket gophers continue to wreak havoc on electrical lines, livestock yards, telephone lines and other areas of Brookings County, Gregg said. They're pests, and they can do serious damage.

"With the traps getting more expensive and everything else, we voted as a board to try to get an increase in that," he said.

Commissioner Dennis Falken said the increased bounty would probably give gopher hunters more incentive.

"If we can encourage people, with the price of gas and everything else, to go out there and trap these for a dollar apiece, if they're getting two maybe it'll encourage someone just to go out and take a few more of these out of circula- information to share with commissioners .

Egeberg had told Vogel that Brookings County paid $576.25 to fund the bounty program in 2008.

"He doesn't anticipate a larger number than that being trapped during 2009, so we'd be going from $576.25 to roughly $1,200," she said.

The commission voted 5-0 to approve the increase.

Local townships and the two companies, Sioux Valley Energy and Interstate Telecommunications Cooperative, Inc., will contribute a total of $1.50 of the bounties for each gopher, and the other 50 cents will be funded by Brookings County. Before the bounty was raised, the county's share was 25 cents.

Some private parties - for example, farmers with valuable crops that are threatened by the ground squirrels - have been reported to pay trappers as much as $3 per tail.

Egeberg said in an interview Wednesday that gopher hunters can collect their bounties for trapping the rodents from their local township clerk or supervisor. Typically, hunters or trappers produce the animal's two front feet to verify a kill.

"I'm very happy that it passed, because with the number of gophers we have out here that's one incentive for controlling the population," he said. tion," he said.

Falken said the gophers continue to be a problem.

"They do multiply very fast, and so I think anything we can do would be positive, and it's not a tremendous increase in cost," he said.

He said he expected Brookings County Weed and Pest Supervisor Gary Egeberg to be able to absorb the increased bounties into his budget. The county has only spent around $4,000 on the bounty program since its inception in 2003, Falken said.