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their tremendous numbers have been an important contributing factor along 
with over—gnazing by livestock and unfavorable climate in depleting this 
cover, and’ thus have greatly reduced the protection afforded tne soil 
and subjected it-the more to increased sheet erosion. Even light rains 
on rodent-infested areas are likely to start cutting, which may develop 
into destructive gulley erosion because of the almost immediate accumula- 
tion of run-offs in the myriads of burrows and channels which these 
animals construct just under the surface of the soil." 
The Soil Conservation Service récognizes the relation of rodents 
to the revegetation of the range, and rodent control is one of its prin-— 
cipal projects. | : 
A few concrete examples will illustrate the great good that has 
resulted from the ECW rodent-control program. A group of farmers living 
at Springfield, Idaho, suggested to the cemp Superintendent there that the 
jack rabbit control work done by tne ECW crew during the summer of 1935 
might pay tne 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 graging lands. 
The control work carried on by an ECW 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 trempled out most of the grass, while livestock 
grazing nad been reduced to a negligible figure. The restoration in two 
years time was due primarily to the elimination of the pocket gophers. 
To control prairie dogs in Oklahoma, an area of 47,000 acres in 
Pawnee, Nobic, and Kay Counties, was trcated through the medium of the 
ECW. The Indien lands here are interspersed with private lands, and the 
landowners were unable to make any progress in a general clean up. This 
was because there were insufficient Federal funds to treat the Indian lands 
until the ECW project afforded opportunity to carry on a systematic campaign 
over the entire area. A good piece of work was accomplished, and the grass 
was So much better over these old prnirie dog towns in the spring of 1955 
that the Indien Service officials at Pawnee received an increase 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 Federsl Treasury. 
Some persons uninformed as to the need for rodent-control and the 
methods followed by the Biologicsl Survey in carrying on the work have 
Stated that. control by use of poison and CCC workers endangers the existence 
of other forms of wildlife. This, however, is not the case. The Biological 
Survey hes. studied rodent-control methods for more than twenty years and in 
