Lori Isaacson, age 12, of Princeton, I11., for her question:

DOES A GOPHER HAVE ANY VALUE?

Many people confuse the gopher with the ground squirrel. They're a lot alike, but they are actually different creatures. Both, however, are burrowing animals, and their habits regarding the vegetation in the area where they live can be summed up in one word: destructive. Many varieties of ground squirrels can be found from the Pacific Coast eastward to Michigan and Indiana.

Gopher is the common name of the pocket gopher, Geomyidae. He's a rodent and belongs to the same order of animals as the beaver, mouse and squirrel.

You'll find the gopher in all parts of North America except the very far north and the east. They live in the interior of British Columbia in Canada and as far south as Costa Rica. They can be found west of the Mississippi as well as in northern Florida, Georgia and southern Alabama.

The gopher is about 10 inches long and has a blunt head, small eyes and ears and short legs. His coat is silky soft fur and brown in color. His forefeet are armed with strong and curved claws that are used for digging. Also pressed into service when it is time to dig are long upper front teeth.

When digging, gophers move slowly through long and complex underground tunnels. They actually spend much time patrolling their tunnels which often extend for as long as 800 feet. only during breeding time does a gopher let another gopher into.his tunnel.

Since they spend most of their time underground, gophers have very poor eyesight. Aiding in their sense of touch, however, is a short, hairless tail that is tactile   that is, it acts as an organ of touch.

In the balance of nature, every creature has his own important place. While the gopher is a most destructive animal who eats vegetables. trees and farm crops and damages banks of canals and irrigation ditches, he also plays his own part in the scheme of nature. Some of the vegetation he eats isn't the farmer's  and thus he helps to control growing plants as nature intended. And he himself is sought after by other creatures and consumed by them as their part of the total balance of nature.

Pocket gophers have external cheek pouches or pockets. When they pick up buds, farm vegetables, roots, nuts, grasses and other food items, they place it in their cheek pouches before eventually eating it.

There's a constant war going on between the farmer and the gopher. The man of the soil usually says he sees absolutely no redeeming graces in the gopher.