Evening star., 1934-02-25

acres OF once productive lano-WnOae
States, in fact-on q speedy road to
Sahara. The subterranean water table
has fallen so far below the surface Of
the ground that vegetation can no
longer thrive. .-----
And down this path Of needless de-
struction went also the great flocks Of
migratory waterfowl, upland game birds
and mammals. They were crowded out
of their native haunts by , civilization
which could not live on the land after
Il had been reclaimed"
That is a complete picture Of the
"sub-marginal" lands you hear 50 much
about these days. Their withdrawal
from agriculture has two purposes back
OF it-first, to provide the tiller Of good
soil a fair market, free of destructive
competition with starvation farming;
second, to rescue the army of stranded
human beings who have exhausted their
savings, their strength and their hope
trying to wrest living from sterile
acres. Eleven per cent OF the farm
crops overbalance the markets OF the
whole farm population Eleven per cent
of farm production comes from marginal
and sub-marginal lands. So what?
Well, this, for instance. Wild ducks,
geese, plover, snipe, prairie chicken,
partridge, wild turkey and several fleets
Of Noah's Arks full of mammals, great
and small, used to do a great job of
living and bringing forth of their
young on those same sub-marginal
ns1
tramps out of thousands Of human
beings who tried to farm them. When
we drained the lakes and lowlands we
sucked dry the great nesting grounds
Of our wild waterfowl. When there were
no more nesting grounds there were no
young ducklings to grow up and take
the place of those killed in the annual
grations. Even If men had never
hunted at all there would still be the
same problem of disappearing wild fowl
today, due to the destruction Of their
nesting grounds.
Removal of the underbrush from the
hillsides and waste lands, together with
use of the moving machines-their
activities coincide with the intensive
nesting season of upland game birds
have done the same thing to those
species that drainage has done to the
ducks.
A sheep rancher's dead lamb out on
the deserts rim, with the marks Of a
coyotes teeth on his throat, led to a
campaign to destroy the depredator.
Destruction of the coyotes, whose pre-
ferred diet is jackrabbits, allowed the
latter to multiply until they became a
menace to the crops. Now we must go
out and poison a million jackrabbits-
and we have more mutton than we
know what to do with.
THOUSANDS Of acres Of marshes once
produced a greater annual profit
tn muskrat skins Chats where your
fedora comes from) than any crop that
has been raised on those same marshes
since they were drained. And the drain
age bonds are still unpaid.
In fact, we have at great expenditure
Of money and human energy robbed
nature of something we do not want.
We have stolen something we cannot
use, wish we didn't have and want to
give back. Those sportsmen and
friends of wild life who have been COL
laborating under the direction of the
President and Secretary of Agriculture
to find ways and means Of giving It
back see a chance to post reward for
the return of the stolen property"
That reward would be the measurable
economic returns from a restoration