Two SCJ Alliance staff are among the first in Washington state to have passed the exam for the Mazama Pocket Gopher Protocol and Mound Identification training. The training was provided by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS).

Lisa Palazzi, CPSS, PWS, and Lisa Schlender attended a two-day course covering everything from soils, mound identification and the gopher’s natural history, to the Endangered Species Act, the federal law that regulates Mazama Pocket Gophers and other listed animal species. Both the training and exam included classroom and field time.

Lisa Palazzi is a Certified Professional Soil and Wetland Scientist, and Lisa Schlender has a Biology degree.

The contact information for these two trained and qualified individuals is now included on the USFWS website, as well as provided to local jurisdictions within the range of the listed Mazama pocket gopher species.

This qualifies each of them to be used as resources to differentiate between mole mounds and Mazama Pocket Gopher mounds. People on the USFWS website list are the only non-governmental employees recognized to make this distinction.