The demands made upon the Federal Government some years ago for aid in
suppressing those wild animals of the public domain that continually
spread out into areas that had been placed under cultivation or used
for grazing purposes produced the first Federal cooperative efforts
toward the control of predatory animals and injurious rodents. The
settler who saw the profits of his early work wiped out by the
incursions of wolves, coyotes, mountain lions, and bobcats from the
public domain into his stock ranges, and of prairie dogs, ground
squirrels, pocket gophers, jack rabbits, and other rodents into his
cultivated fields, had no recourse other than to ask the aid of the
Government whose lands served as breeding reservoirs from which these
predators and rodents came. Otherwise they would reinfest his stocked
and cultivated acres in spite of all that he could do to prevent them,
either single handed or with the aid of his neighbors.