BLACK-FOOTED FERRET:
Fort Belknap tribal biologist Mike Kinsey and World Wildlife Fund's Kristy Bly prepare to release ferrets at the Snake Butte Recovery Area.
The black-footed ferret is a small nocturnal predator endemic to North America for 750,000 to 1 million years. It was twice declared extinct in the wild (in 1979 and 1987) mainly due to habitat loss and widespread poisoning of its chief prey, the prairie dog, whom farmers and ranchers deem a nuisance and competitor with livestock for grass. Most recently, ferrets (and prairie dogs) have been devastated by an invasive disease: sylvatic plague, the wildlife equivalent of bubonic plague. All black-footed ferrets today are descendants of 7 animals brought into captivity when it was believed the animal would go extinct. Continued intolerance from ranchers and farmers toward both these species has made their recovery an uphill challenge. There are currently only believed some 2-300 black-footed ferrets in the wild, making it North America’s most endangered mammal.
WHAT TRIBES ARE DOING:
The fate of ferrets and prairie dogs go hand in hand. Since America’s grasslands were converted to agriculture, prairie dogs and ferrets have been eliminated from about 95% of their former range. With large, intact prairie eco-systems (untouched by the plow) reservations today welcome a disproportionate number of ferrets for reintroduction and the first of these was FORT BELKNAP, MONTANA, home to the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre tribes. With ferret populations as precarious as they are, and the nocturnal animal as elusive as it is, managing these little predators is no easy matter, requiring frequent all-night spot-lighting, habitat surveys, capture for vaccination, and dusting against plague. At LOWER BRULE SIOUX RESERVATION in South Dakota, decimated by plague in 2011 and 2013, the tribal biologist has joined vaccine trials, and enlisted a tribal youth conservation corps to help him, that if successful would protect the prairie dog from the disease - the most imminent hurdle to the ferret’s longterm survival.
A sedated prairie dog on the Lower Brule Sioux Reservation, about to have blood, whiskers and part of a claw sampled by tribal biologist Shaun Grassel, to test the effectiveness of a new vaccine against plague. Should a vaccine be discovered, the recovery of both black-footed ferrets and prairie dogs will still be contingent on there being places where people are willing to tolerate them.