Townsend's mole (Scapanus townsendii) COSEWIC assessment and status report: chapter 10
Existing Protection or Other Status
Originally on the Blue List (Sensitive/Vulnerable) provincially, Townsend’s mole’s status was upgraded by the British Columbia Ministry of Environment to the Red List (Endangered/Threatened) to acknowledge its limited range (Munroe 1993).
Some mole habitat is protected through the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR), created in 1974 to protect 135,000 ha of farmland in the Fraser Valley from Development (British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food 1995). Although this designation provides some protection, 6% of the land has already been withdrawn from the ALR (Moore 1990). Huntingdon is in the southern part of the ALR in that region and is separated from the northern part around Clayburn and Matsqui Prairie by non-ALR land, the City of Abbotsford.
The global status of Townsend’s mole as determined by the Association for Biodiversity Information is G5 – secure (common, typically widespread and abundant), because it is not at risk in California, Oregon or Washington (BC Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks 2001). The Province of British Columbia considers Townsend’s mole Threatened and has placed it on its Red List where it has a Subnational Rank of S1 (critically imperiled due to extreme rarity or population size <1,000, making it especially vulnerable to extinction).