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Manitoba's war on wildlife.

Article Excerpt
It was inevitable, as European-style agriculture was imposed on the prairie ecosystem starting in the 1800s, that human interests would come into conflict with those of wild animals. Manitoba's Municipal Act, first enacted in 1873, instructed municipalities to pass by-laws "for the destruction of wolves, foxes, gophers and rats within the municipality and for fixing the indemnity to be paid therefore, the proof required that any animal was killed within the municipality and the manner of payment." (1) In other words, municipal officials actively aided and abetted a war on wildlife that went on throughout the twentieth century.

Mechanization during and after World War One was undoubtedly responsible for remarkable gains in farm crop yields. But this was only a benefit if most of the crop ended up in the farmer's granary. Consumption in the field by pests represented an unacceptable loss, especially when every bit of food was needed to sustain Canada's war machine overseas. Public enemy number one was the "gopher", a collective name for three common species occurring in Manitoba at the time: the Flickertail or Richardson's Ground Squirrel (Spermophilus richardsonii), the Scrub Gopher or Franklin's Ground Squirrel (Spermophilus franklinii), and the Striped Gopher or Thirteen-Lined Ground Squirrel (Spermophilus tridecemlineatus). By feeding on developing grain heads, gophers were a threat that no farmer could ignore. During the summer of 1917, for example, there were an estimated 10 million gophers in western Manitoba, at densities ranging from 5 to 30 per acre. They could consume or spoil an estimated two and a quarter million bushels of grain, so killing even two million of them would translate into a saving of half a million bushels. The threat to the Allied war effort was clear. One especially imaginative advertisement in the Western Municipal News magazine portrayed gophers as invading German soldiers, replete with spiked helmets and scythes.

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A 1918 government pamphlet advised that "gopher-shooting with a .22 is good business as well as good sport," but the primary weapon in the farmer's arsenal against gophers was poison. Anton Mickelson, one of the primary purveyors of gopher poison at the time, became well-known in municipal circles, and a regular attendee at annual conventions, where he offered wholesale prices to municipalities. He arrived on the Manitoba scene around 1912, when his company and others began marketing such products as Kill-Em-Quick, Ready Rodo, Gophercide, Bolduan's Poisoned Grain, and My Own. Home-made recipes with names like North Dakota Mixture and Canadian Vinegar Mixture were also available. The active ingredient in all of them was strychnine, and commercial formulations were usually a greenish-blue liquid smelling strongly of vinegar. Mixed in a gallon pail of water, wheat or oats would be added until the solution was fully absorbed. Then the poisoned grain would be spread on the ground at places frequented by gophers. It was well known that gophers could travel considerable distances from their burrows to grain fields, so non-agricultural sites were also targets for gopher control. A 1912 resolution by the Union of Manitoba Municipalities (UMM) urged railways to destroy gophers burrowing on their rights-of-way. A...

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