The Influence of Sylvatic Plague on North American Wildlife at the Landscape Level, with Special Emphasis on Black-footed Ferret and Prairie Dog Conservation

Prairie-dogs are distributed over a large part of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain regions. Their colonies often number thousands of individuals, and their destruction of grasses and other forage plants makes them of considerable economic importance. Drastic measures are frequently necessary to prevent the destruction of crops of grain and hay. The Biological Survey is exterminating these rodents in national forests and in the public domain. The information in this report, in regards to the several species and their distribution, as indicated by maps, will aid materially in efforts, national or state, to control or exterminate them, said Henry W. Henshaw in 1915 (Hollister 1916)