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 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 grazing
lands.
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."