Map of Prairie Dog Infestation in the Western United States, Bureau of Crop Estimates, 1915

The BBS Field Reports and Maps collection includes maps, field reports, news clippings, and correspondence created by the Biological Survey from 1900 to 1940, when the predator and rodent control activities of the BBS were transferred to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Records from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) are also included and cover the years from 1940 to 1955. Materials in this collection pertain to federal efforts to control damage caused by rodents, small mammals, and predatory animals to agricultural interests in the western United States. Field reports, along with hundreds of maps that record the locations of BBS control campaigns are included. Records in this collection are organized by geographic location where field operations were conducted and are arranged chronologically to show the development and progress of BBS rodent and predatory animal control programs during the first half of the twentieth century.

This collection consists of eleven Hollinger boxes of documents and two map case drawers of maps and charts. Most of the records pertain to the extensive campaigns carried out by the BBS in national forests and on public lands to control depredations caused by prairie dogs, ground squirrels, pocket gophers, rabbits, and other rodents destructive to forest, orchard, and nursery stock, farm produce, and livestock ranges. Records pertaining to BBS demonstrations in farming districts are also included. Materials documenting BBS campaigns for the control of wolves, coyotes, mountain lions, and other animals destructive to livestock and poultry are included as well. This collection contains reports from the following BBS staff: Vernon Bailey, Clarence Birdseye, J.G. Crick, Ned Dearborn, U.S. Ebner, A.K. Fisher, D.A. Gilchrist, , R.T. Jackson, W.C. Jacobson, Joseph Keyes, C.R. Landon, D.E. Lantz, J.S. Ligon, Stanley Piper, E.R. Sans, T.H. Scheffer, James Silver, A.F. Taylor, R.A. Ward, J.R. Williams, and C.M. Yerrington.

Historians and researchers interested in the history of federally sponsored predator and rodent control projects on Indian reservations, national forests, and other public lands in the American West will find value in the BBS Field Reports and Maps collection. These records document cooperative efforts made by the BBS and states, counties, farmers, and livestock associations to control depredations cause by rodents and predatory animals in the United States. This collection contains original hand-written field reports, expense reports, annual reports, maps of national forests and other locations where extermination campaigns took place, historic newspaper clippings, telegrams, and other correspondence.