Badlands National Park in South Dakota has had success in helping black-footed ferrets recover their population/NPS file
One of the most endangered species in the Western United States, if not the entire country, is the black-footed ferret. In fact, it was listed as an endangered species in 1967, six years before the Endangered Species Act was passed by Congress. Today, more than 50 years on, this cousin to the weasel continues to struggle, and the U.S. Forest Service appears to be making things worse.
For a while after it was designated "endangered" it was thought that the black-footed ferret had actually gone extinct. And then, in 1981, a ranch dog in Meeteetse, Wyoming -- "Shep" -- came trotting home with a critter in it mouth, and it was determined to be a black-footed ferret, aka the prairie dog hunter.
Wildlife biologists were understandably thrilled by this find, and headed out and found a small population of black-footed ferrets. Zoom forward to 2020, and there has been an active captive breeding program through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department that has led to some fairly good success with generating ferret populations to distribute in the West. And yet, the species is struggling.
"A lot of these (repopulation) sites are like five, ten, maybe 20 (ferrets), all adding up to 350, but even then, it's been really challenging to build up their numbers," said Chamois Andersen, the Rockies and Plains senior representative for Defenders of Wildlife. "We've got about 300 in captivity. So this is at the Fish and Wildlife Service center in Fort Collins (Colorado) as well as zoos. And those are the animals that we use to supplement the wild populations.
"And some of the wild populations are starting to have babies on their own, we're starting to see recruitment happen," she added last week during a call from her Laramie, Wyoming, office. "But not to the extent that we'd like to see for overall recovery."
Key to the struggle is that 97 percent of the historic habitat of black-tailed prairie dogs, which ferrets prey on, has been lost. Finding, and maintaining, suitable habitat has been a struggle almost since Shep's find launched a captive breeding program. Since the recovery program began in 1987 in a small Wyoming Game and Fish Department complex in remote Sybille Canyon, it has led to ferrets being released at about 30 sites in 16 states. Among those release points are Badlands and Wind Cave national parks in South Dakota.
At Badlands, where the program crosses over into the Conata Basin in Buffalo Gap National Grassland, ferrets are doing quite well.
"About 100 black-footed ferrets are at Badlands, 13,000 acres, it's a model site for ferret recovery," Andersen said. "But it took us ten years to get there. We went through plague, there's been a lot of effort to get where we're at with the successful ferret recovery, including $200,000 a year in investments."
Wind Cave, while it has a surviving ferret population, it has not taken off like that at Badlands. There might be a couple dozen ferrets alive there, she said.
In looking around the West for possible release sites, a 50,000-acre site in Thunder Basin National Grassland in Wyoming had looked promising, in large part because of both the size of the site and its resident population of prairie dogs. However, in mid-May the Forest Service finalized an amendment to the 547,499-acre grassland's management plan that allows for the killing of black-tailed prairie dogs that reside in the area and removes the designation of the area as a ferret recovery zone, according to Defenders.
The changes make it impossible for the area to support 100 breeding adult ferrets, which is a threshold that must be reached in ten of the 30 recovery areas for the "endangered" status to be removed from the species.
Thunder Basin "has been identified, because it's a national grassland with such vast public lands, as a key site for ferret recovery," Andersen said. "For many years we've been trying to overcome what has become a rather intense social issue with the local ranchers, landowners, in the region. It's about prairie dogs. Ranchers tend to think prairie dogs eat all their grass for cattle, and would just as soon poison them all, including on our public lands, where they lease grazing rights.
"We've been trying to establish enough prairie dog acres and conserve acres for the reintroduction of the ferret and have yet to get past the social issue with the ranchers."
Anyone who has been to Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota probably would think it might be a good recovery site for ferrets due to the readily apparent prairie dogs, but for now the focus is on maintaining and building the populations on the existing recovery sites, she said.
"And we're not doing so well, to be quite honest. We have been sort of vacillating between 300 and 400 wild ferrets for the last several years, and can't seem to get past that 400 mark of recruitment, of pups born in the wild every year," Andersen added. "Primarily because prairie dogs on a lot of these sites, on adjoining lands, routinely get poisoned, so lethal control measures by counties and even ranchers and even federal officials, and then they're also susceptible to sylvatic plague, and that can wipe out a prairie dog community in a matter of days, and ultimately, shortly thereafter we see black-footed ferrets quickly decline."
More recently, another threat to the ferrets has cropped up: Covid-19.
"Obviously, it goes without stating that Covid-19 and the worldwide pandemic has had some serious implications for human health, and our attempts to control the virus has seriously disrupted our normal way of life and work. And on the work side, this includes the field work of wildlife professionals such as myself. When it comes to ferrets, humans can transmit the disease to ferrets," the Defenders representative said.
"It's a species of the mustiled family, which in domestic ferrets and minks has shown that they are susceptible to Covid-19 from humans, and they can also shed the virus back to humans. And so you can imagine, every year we are working so hard to maintain and even build up the wild population, and so if we in any way introduce this virus to ferrets, it could have dire consequences for overall recovery of the species."
To guard against transmitting the disease to black-footed ferrets, biologists and technicians involved in the captive breeding and release programs all wear personal protective equipment when they are around the animals, she said.
"We've had numerous meetings over the last several weeks to come up with best management practices for just what to do to avoid and to minimize any risk for ferrets receiving this virus," said Andersen.
The effort to help black-footed ferrets one day escape the Endangered Species List could use a little help from some of the public land-management agencies, too.
Comments
Although the Tule elk situation at Point Reyes may be the most graphically disgusting and abusive betrayal of sensitive species protections in a national park unit, the black-footed ferret situation may actually be worse. Driven to incredibly low numbers, this is a species that suffered an extreme loss of genetic diversity. The fact that their numbers "have been sort of vacillating between 300 and 400 wild ferrets for the last several years" means that their gene pool, confined to such low numbers, has had no real chance to begin recovering. The fact that "routine" poisoning by the usual, defiantly ignorant, spoiled brat ranchers is, once again, such a major part of the problem is despicable enough; but, the fact that it's aided, abetted, and facilitated by local, state, and "even federal officials" using, once again, our taxpayer dollars is just unconscionable and unforgiveable.
It's also fundamentally stupid. Species seldom have any capacity to evolve, survive, or thrive all on their own. Sure, there are some species, like spotted knapweed, carrion flies, cockroaches, rats, coyotes, and humans for instance, that are so adaptable that they can invade and prosper in a relatively wide variety of environments; however, most species evolve to fit into a niche in a community of species that, together, form an intact and functioning ecosystem. We now know that many of today's conservation and species protection issues are the result of a disruption of those wildlife communities and their ecosystems.
So, what does this have to do with black-footed ferrets? The quickest way to start to answer that question might be to go back and look at what has become one of our very best, although still imperfect, "go to" conservation labs, Yellowstone. We know that the environment in Yellowstone, especially the riparian environment, was quite lush in the pre-European period. Browser and grazer numbers were constrained by both seasonal conditions and a full complement of predators; however, with the arrival of European cultures, beaver were trapped and the full complement of predators was diminished. Elk numbers went up; bison were reduced, but also no longer freely migrated, becoming permanent rather than intermittent residents; and the resultant overgrazing of riparian areas removed stream and wetland cover. The elimination of beavers drained what was left of the wetlands and encouraged more grazing intrusion. Streams warmed and erosion created incised watercourses that then laterally drained and dried what were once lush meadows. The diminishment or outright removal of larger predators also changed the composition of predators. The elimination of wolves allowed coyotes to proliferate, which impacted smaller predators like foxes and weasels and such, and ultimately, even despite increased direct predation by coyotes, led to an increase in, voila, rodents. By slowly, but surely, enabling the reintroduction of Yellowstone's full complement of predators, elk no longer linger in wetlands; aspen and willow are starting to return, as are beavers; silt is refilling and rebuilding incised watercourses and lateral drainage effects are being reduced. With wolves back, coyote numbers are way down; smaller predators like foxes and weasels and such can now compete and hold their own; and rodent numbers seem to be lower.
You're still having trouble with what this has to do with black-footed ferrets out on the plains? These ferrets, these weasels, evolve to fit into a niche in a community of plains species that formed an intact plains ecosystem on a level similar to that of a pristine Yellowstone ecosystem. Resident elk and deer were the relatively permanent components of a browser and grazer community that included migratory bison and pronghorn and all were constrained by both seasonal conditions and a full complement of predators, which included bears, wolves, lions, coyotes, foxes, badgers, and, yes, ferrets. Despite whatever gibberish the usual, defiantly ignorant, spoiled brat ranchers might offer, what we have now looks nothing like that original plains ecosystem. The larger predators, bears, wolves, and lions, have all long been eliminated, leaving coyotes to proliferate, diminishing smaller predators, like foxes and weasels and such, and, ultimately, even despite increased direct predation by coyotes, leading to an increase in, voila, prairie dogs.
Farmers didn't have any problem; they just plowed everything under; but, how did our defiantly ignorant, spoiled brat ranchers respond? In a misdirected and simpleminded frenzy to increase their profits by increasing their production, they culled out admittedly leaner, but more durable, existing breeds of cattle that were somewhat adapted to the predators and harsher frontier conditions and replaced them with fatter northern European breeds that have less resistance even to coyotes and, worse, often can't even calve without their calves needing to be pulled. And, by bringing in more nonnative animals of all sorts, they also brought in the plague, bangs, and new varieties of disease carrying ticks, and all sorts of other pestilence. Then, always in need of someone or something else to blame for their troubles, they set out to get rid of the coyotes, which is difficult given that coyotes are the ultimate weedy invaders and hard to eliminate. Only wolves seem to really know how to kill coyotes; so, over time, all the ranchers accomplished was more coyotes and more prairie dogs, along with more jackrabbits. So, then, they got all modern and, with the help of dimwitted local, state, and federal officials, started using poison. They poisoned coyotes and did it in ways that also killed anything that fed on the bodies; then, when killing coyotes just got them more prairie dogs, they started poisoning prairie dogs and, again, that just poisoned anything that fed on those bodies, including ferrets.
And, that's where we are today. In fact, I can hear those defiantly ignorant, spoiled brat ranchers right now. Listen and you can hear the big one in the red cap say, "You know if we start telling folks that these ferrets all got this COVID-19 and it'll kill 'em if we don't get more federal aid to get rid of the prairie dogs, then we can kill two birds with one stone, get cousin Bob a USDA predator control contract while getting rid of all this endangered species interference at the same time."
Very well said. It's terrible that the Forest Service, under the current political "leadership," is so complicit in poisoning the dwindling number of prairie dogs, which support the entire prairie ecosystem.
This is another reason why we need to expand the National Park System.
Thunder Basin should be a national park, which would focus on the protection of prairie dogs and recovery of the black-footed ferret. A Comanche-Cimarron National Park in Colorado and Kansas would provide the opportunity to reintroduce the black-footed ferret. Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota could be expanded to incorporate the surrounding Little Missouri National Grassland, which is now being degraded by livestock grazing and ravaged by oil and gas drilling. A new Chiricahua National Park in southwestern New Mexico that includes Otero Mesa would phase out cattle grazing, protect prairie dogs, and allow the continuing recovery of ferrets.
There are many other examples.
I very strongly agree, Mr. Kellett. It disturbs me that the USFS got into the grassland business and has control of the half million acre Thunder Basin National Grassland. While the NPS often supports species protection, at least as a public amusement, the USFS is controlled by the USDA, which is worse, if you can believe it, than the DOI, and really only tolerates species protection because the law and lawsuits require it. USFS, as an arm of USDA, pretty much focuses on subsidized agricultural and extractive industry support. Logging, mining, and oil and gas wherever possible will generally get top priority and USFS personnel can sometimes be just flat bad to the bone. USFS control over grasslands almost guarantees destructive practices, up to and including widespread poisoning, toward prairie dogs and, at best, passive-aggressive hostility toward the reintroduction of black-footed ferrets and negligence bordering on enmity toward existing remnant populations.
I agree about the need for more midwest plains-style parks. One candidate outside of the grasslands area but not far away is the Black Hills. You could even link the two parks with a corridor or scenic highway like that linking Grand Teton to Yellowstone. I'd maybe create a Black Hills National Heritage Park including Rushmore, Elk Peak, and Jewel Cave NM.
There really should be shortgrass prairie and tallgrass prairie parks or monuments north and south throughout the midwest.
Yes, I also agree that Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota absolutely should be expanded to incorporate the surrounding Little Missouri National Grassland and there should be shortgrass prairie and tallgrass prairie parks or monuments north and south throughout the midwest. But, I strongly support the idea of a Comanche-Cimarron National Park in Colorado and Kansas. Pulling lands that are now under fragmented USFS management into consolidated NPS control, certainly would provide a better opportunity to reintroduce black-footed ferrets further south and I support a new Chiricahua National Park, including Otero Mesa, in southwestern New Mexico.
I emphasize including protected grasslands further south because, with the species at such low numbers, I believe we need to at least try to tease out, sustain, and regrow, if possible, any remnant genetics we still have left that might support this species retaining an ability to thrive in warmer, arid grasslands like Otero Mesa. It won't be easy and it shouldn't take away from reintroductions further north; but, if such genetics still exist within the remaining black-footed ferret genome, they, like those of Desert Bighorn and Gila and Apache Trout, might prove invaluable in a more arid, globally warmed, future. And, no, the earth isn't flat and we do need to prepare for a more arid, globally warmed, future.
All is not lost. Black Footed Ferrets are still with us. Yes, conservation areas need to be expanded and existing grazing leases bought out to help link these lands for the Ferrets and Prairie Dogs. How are we going to obtain this funding for buyouts of grazing issues and increased linkages in these lands? Land and Water Conservation Fund. Senate and Congress is taking up full funding of LWCF at 900 million a year. President Trump says he will sign LWCF. Hang on. All is not lost.
Interesting. I sighted and watched a Black Footed Ferret on frozen Big Creek, Harrison County, Missouri in 1984. I sketched it showing it to a Missouri Conservation Agent who had no idea what it was.