Preventing moles and gophers

Can it even be done?  We have a large mole population.  I bought some sonic repellers from someone on NextDoor, and look how well they worked.  After 2 seasons, I found that some industrious moles actually DUG UP one of the repellers!

They went to the trouble of pushing up the log!

Hmm, I wonder if the long border of logs was transmitting the vibrations of the repeller to a greater distance than just through the soil.  Maybe that's why this repeller got dug up but the other one (not in contact with wood) didn't.

Another Nextdoor.com neighbor posted a great solution--chop up dried thorny branches (say, from blackberry) into 1" pieces, then flush those pieces into the holes.  I wonder if it'll work.  I can't do it, though, because I want to bring in gopher snakes, and after they kill moles, they move in!  Bummer.