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DVP Groundhogs may sound like a fledgling Toronto sports team, but they’re actual critters who live in an seemingly inhospitable habitat.

It turns out a grassy, hilly median, between the north and southbound lanes of the Don Valley Parkway — one of Toronto’s busiest thoroughfares — is a sweet spot for a bunch of groundhogs thriving south of Eglington Ave., and north of Spanbridge Rd.

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Now that spring has officially sprung, drivers stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic are seeing the furry highway oddities, also known as woodchucks, scurrying around with more frequency as they venture out of holes in that patch of land.

“As long as I can remember, we’ve gotten sporadic calls about those groundhogs,” said Nathalie Karvonen, the executive director at the Toronto Wildlife Centre (TWC).

“Quite often the calls we get are about ‘beavers’ on the Don Valley Parkway. But the beavers are always the groundhogs.”

Karvonen thinks the territorial rodents, whose diet consists of plants, nuts, seeds and insects (for nursing mothers), took up residence on the DVP “for as long as I can remember — 10 (years) for sure, maybe 20.”

She said her centre receives a handful of calls annually about the woodland creatures, but there’s no cause for alarm.