UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
MISCELLANEOUS PUBLICATION No. 115
Washington, D. C.▲April, 1931

INFORMATION FOR THE GUIDANCE OF FIELD MEN AND COOPERATORS OF THE BUREAU OF BIOLOGICAL SURVEY ENGAGED IN THE CONTROL OF INJURIOUS RODENTS AND PREDATORY ANIMALS

Prepared under the direction of Paul G. Redington, Chief, Bureau of Biological Survey, in the Division of Predatory-Animal and Rodent-Control, Stanley P. Young, Principal Biologist, in Charge

CONTENTS

Page
[Introduction]1
[Necessity for control of wild-animal pests]1
[Control functions of the Bureau of Biological Survey]2
[Legal authorization for control work]2
[Instructions previously issued]3
[Animals on the control program]3
[The injurious rodents]3
[The predatory animals]3
[Other forms subject to control]4
Page
[Instructions regarding field practices]4
[The objective]4
[Conservation, State laws, and cooperation]4
[Precautions in handling poisons]4
[Rodent-control operations]6
[Predatory-animal control]6

[INTRODUCTION]

NECESSITY FOR CONTROL OF WILD-ANIMAL PESTS

The demands made upon the Federal Government some years ago for aid in suppressing those wild animals of the public domain that continually spread out into areas that had been placed under cultivation or used for grazing purposes produced the first Federal cooperative efforts toward the control of predatory animals and injurious rodents. The settler who saw the profits of his early work wiped out by the incursions of wolves, coyotes, mountain lions, and bobcats from the public domain into his stock ranges, and of prairie dogs, ground squirrels, pocket gophers, jack rabbits, and other rodents into his cultivated fields, had no recourse other than to ask the aid of the Government whose lands served as breeding reservoirs from which these predators and rodents came. Otherwise they would reinfest his stocked and cultivated acres in spite of all that he could do to prevent them, either single handed or with the aid of his neighbors.