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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP here. Wow, usually the garden forum is not quite so hopping on a Saturday morning!

Mine is out during the day all day (I can see it from my study window). I[b] am all about co-existence but I am also about keeping my native plants alive for the pollinators and native birds that have so very little to eat. 
[/b]
09:40 -- I actually work in wildlife conservation as a career, so you might want to check your assumptions about why I chose to live where I do and what my goals are here -- ensuring some small part of my neighborhood provides native plant habitat.

I will look into whether trap and release is a viable option.[/quote]

Groundhogs are a native species.  You want to promote native species with your native plants, but only the one you were picturing when you did the planting?  If a different native species benefits you will treat it as non-native simply because it's not as cute as the one you wanted to see?  You're not making sense.[/quote]

OP here, and I do think I'm making sense. I work in wildlife conservation, as I said, and I know a lot about the very real crises facing migratory birds, native pollinators such as bumblebees and butterflies, and other wildlife issues. I have a fenced yard to keep out deer, which are at about 10x their environment's carrying capacity. Between the overbrowse pressure of the deer eating absolutely every native plant that comes up in our area, including Rock Creek Park, and all of the invasives that people have planted because oooh, look at the pretty foliage or berries, everywhere I look it is a biological desert for native birds and native bugs. Deer, rabbits, squirrels, mice, and other rodents such as groundhogs are doing just fine overall, but many of our native birds are either already listed as federal or state endangered species or heading that way. Same with native bumblebees and likely soon the monarch butterfly.

Many native species can co-exist with people, but many more are having a harder time, to the point of facing extinction. I don't think it's irrational to try to manage my very small patch of urban habitat to provide at least some native plants as forage for the native birds that either migrate through or stay in residence all year round. Ditto for pollinators. I fence shrubs with chickenwire to protect them from the rabbits, because otherwise my yard too will be a biological desert where nothing but liriope, pachysandra, English ivy, Japanese stiltgrass, bishop's weed, and other total crap plants grow.

I really do not wish the groundhog ill, and I'm happy that my yard is suitable habitat for native wildlife. But it's not unreasonable given the very significant amounts of labor in both removing invasives and planting natives as well as the money I've put into it not to want a groundhog to come through and destroy those plants and that labor.  If it looks like the fat and happy groundhog is doing a lot of damage to my natives, I will look into trapping/relocating him or her to a wildlife area -- that's a good suggestion. [/quote]

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