early settler in the East brought them over from England thinking they 

 would be an asset to the new country. And apparently he gave little 

 thought this introduction would have on future generations of 

 Americans. South Dakota is experiencing prairie dog encroachment on 

 pasture land and crop land, and pocket gopher damage. Reforestation 

 attempts are being made at various locations throughout the mountain 

 West. Ground squirrels can deal a blow to pasture land and there are 

 numerous field rodent problems. Cities hit by infestations of Norway 

 rats periodically require technical assistance. And incidentially the 

 Norway rat, as many of you know, is another species that was 

 introduced. It was not indigenous to North America. 



We are fortunate I think, to have here in the Rockies, a research 

 facility that is considered the international authority on animal damage 

 control research. I'm talking about the Denver Wildlife Research 

 Center. This center is not a part of our regional operation, but 

 because of our regional office being only about a mile away, the center 

 is extremely useful to us for consultation and both the regional 

 organization and that organization receive benefits from the free-flow of 

 information between the two. This center not only concentrates on 

 predation in this country, but through a cooperative agreement with the 

 Agency for International Development, which provides the funding, it is 

 the leader in worldwide research in this field. I think it's safe to say 

 that there are many people in third-world countries who are alive today 

 because of the work of the Denver Wildlife Research Center. Rats and 

 other rodents literally destroy grain crops in many of those countries. 



I mentioned the research center because its work is particularlly 

 pertinent to the coyote problem in this region. It maintains field 

 stations in Twin Falls, Idaho, Uvalde and Laredo, Texas; Logan, Utah 

 and Rawlins, Wyoming. Their reserach into coyote depredation covers 

 about every angle that the human mind can possibly conceive. They 

 study movement, mortality, food preference, sexual activity and the 

 predator-prey food base, just to mention a few. 



Some of you may have heard about a recent experiment in Idaho in 

 connection with the use of the toxic collar. The experiment involves 

 putting goats in with sheep and studying their social behavior and 

 eventually, hopefully, determining whether coyotes might have a 

 preference for goat kids over lambs. And utilizing the toxic collar, 

 which is designed to hit the so-called target predator if coyotes do in 

 fact prefer goats, the toxic collar could be put on only a few goats in 

 the herd rather than all the animals in a sheep flock. It may sound 

 kind of far out but right now we think it's worth a try, especially 

 since we don't have a total answer to this problem. 



Presumably, the research center will conduct the continuing 

 research into the use of 1080, which Secretary Andrus announced last 

 week. And this brings us probably to the topic that will be of most 

 interest here today, the Secretary's Animal Damage Control policy. 



Last November by memorandum to the Assistant Secretary for Fish 

 and Wildlife, Secretary Andrus made known a number of decisions he 



