  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 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." |
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