Examples of Benefits Derived
A few concrete examples will illustrate the great good that has resulted from the E.C.W. rodent-control program. A group of farmers living at Springfield, Idaho, suggested to the camp superintendent there that the jack rabbit control work done by the E.C.W. crew during the summer of 1935 might pay the cost of the camp. It is estimated that not less than 600,000 rabbits were killed by this crew on public lands adjacent to farming areas between American Falls and Moreland, Idaho. The work afforded protection to not less than half a million dollars worth of cultivated crops and to more than 75,000 acres of grazing lands.
The control work carried on by an E.C.W. crew near Weber Lake, Calif., in 1933 has been responsible for a 50 percent comeback of the grass on a large mountain meadow, which had been made a dust heap because of pocket gopher workings. The pocket gophers had honeycombed the surface of the ground, and sheep had trampled out most of the grass, while livestock grazing had been reduced to a negligible figure. The restoration in two years was due primarily to the elimination of the pocket gophers.
To control prairie dogs in Oklahoma, an area, of 47,000 acres in Pawnee, Noble, and Kay Counties was treated through the medium of the E.C.W. The Indian lands here are interspersed with private lands, and the landowners were unable to make any progress in a general clean up because there were insufficient Federal funds to treat the Indian lands until the E.C.W. project afforded opportunity to carry on a systematic campaign over the entire area. A good piece of work was accomplished, and this, in conjunction with water developments, made the grass so much better over these old prairie dog towns in the spring of 1935 that the Indian Service officials at Pawnee received an increased rental of 25 cents an acre on their grazing lands. On areas where they received 50 cents an acre in 1934, they received 75 cents in 1935, a direct increase in receipts to the Federal Treasury.
The permanent benefit accruing to the Indians from E.C.W. rodent control is summed up as follows by an Agricultural Extension agent of the Indian Service, at Anadarko, Oklahoma:
"No little stress can be placed upon the financial value of the rodent-control project to the Indians. The Indian enrollees received the labor benefit on both Indian and deeded land throughout the reservation but still greater than the temporary labor relief, the Indian has received a lasting increase in the financial rental of his land. Due to such heavy prairie dog infestation of the allotted land it had become necessary to reduce the rental value of the grass land infested. Now that the prairie dogs have been controlled the rental value will be increased by approximately 10 cents or more per acre because the pastures will regrass and the carrying capacity will be increased. In comparing this increase in rental value with the cost of controlling the prairie dogs, the Indians will reap the financial benefit of the Government expenditures in two or three years. Therefore, this project has certainly been of utmost value to the reservation and the Extension Division in helping the Indian to help himself."
Safeguarding Harmless Species
Some persons uninformed as to the need for rodent control and the methods followed by the Biological Survey in carrying on the work have stated that control by use of poison and C.C.C. workers endangers the existence of other forms of wildlife. This, however, is not the case. The Biological Survey has studied rodent-control methods for more than twenty years and in this period it has developed the most scientific and selective poisons possible. Scientific investigations conducted by the Bureau are bringing increasing knowledge of the habits of economically injurious species and of their physiological reaction to various baits. This has made it possible to use more and more specific control methods and so to select, prepare, and expose poison baits as not seriously to endanger animals other than those for which the baits are intended. When these scientific methods are carried out under direct supervision of trained personnel, the total number of beneficial species destroyed is negligible.
The Biological Survey is a conservation organization and will undertake no work that will be detrimental to any species of animal not interfering too greatly with the interests of man. Those conversant with actual conditions in the range States realize that if agriculture is to survive, the control of injurious rodents is as essential as is control of the corn borer, the chinch bug, the boll weevil, the grasshopper, the coddling moth, and numerous other agricultural pests. The Survey insists that in conducting work of this sort, the most careful supervision by trained technicians must be given. All cooperating agencies recognize the necessity for such supervision, and as a result a most worth-while program has been carried on during the past three fiscal years. The Biological Survey has entered into written cooperative understandings with the various governmental agencies under which rodent-control activities have been conducted. These agreements place the responsibility for technically supervising all rodent-control activities in the hands of the Bureau, leaving the cooperating agencies responsible for administration.