TWENTY-SIXTH REPORT OF STATE ENTOMOLOGIST 15 



6. A broader and more intensive program of grasshopper 

 research than is being supported at the present time.* 



Direct Offensive Against Range Grasshoppers 



According to this method of approach we would attempt the 

 control of range grasshoppers by an extensive campaign of 

 poisoning on the range. During the worst years five million 

 acres or more would have to be treated, although there are 

 times even in great outbreak years when the 'hoppers seem to 

 congregate in low places where the feed is greener, making it 

 possible to get considerable control by treating a smaller per- 

 centage of the entire area. With our present bait formula, a 

 straight poisoning campaign, in which a large part of affected 

 range would be treated, does not appear to be economically 

 sound. The cost of bait alone would be about 10 cents per acre 

 which is about the rent value of the grass saved on good range 

 if perfect control were obtained. Let us look for a moment at 

 the economics of poisoning just one-sixth of the range land east 

 of the continental divide in Montana. This woud be approxi- 

 mately five million acres. Provided the bait could be cheapened 

 to half the cost of that now in general use the expense would be 

 $312,500. As there is probably not man power on our ranches 

 sufficient to take care of the spreading of 25,000 tons of bait, 

 the cost of distribution would enter into the total cost of the 

 operation. There are three possible ways by which the bait 

 could be distributed: by hand from light trucks or buckboards, 

 by mechanical spreaders, or by airplanes. Accordingly, the cost 

 for one application of poisoned bait to five million acres, count- 

 ing one dollar an hour for hand spreading (two men) , one and 

 one-half dollars per hour for the operation of a mechanical 



*The Montana Agricultural Experiment Station is no longer engaged in 

 investigation of grasshoppers. In 1930 when the laboratory of the U. 8. 

 Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine was established on the campus 

 at Montana State College with Dr. J. R. Parker (formerly with the Montana 

 Agricultural Experiment Station) in charge, an agreement was entered into 

 under which research work on grasshoppers is to be done by the federal 

 laboratory and the control of grasshoppers by the State Entomologist's office. 



