The Black-Footed Ferret Recovery Implementation Team  Barriers to Black-footed Ferret Recovery Black-footed ferrets are spectacularly adapted to their prairie ecosystem home and very particularly to their prairie dog prey and prairie dog burrow shelter. Through eons of evolution, black-footed ferrets mastered the utilization of an abundant resource: prairie dogs and their burrow systems. They had it all figured out and lived without significant barriers to their well being until European settlers pulled several fast ones on them. Settlers plowed up a significant portion of the prairie, destroying prairie dog complexes, poisoned prairie dogs as agricultural pests, and inadvertently introduced a non-native disease, sylvatic plague to the extent that less than 2% of the historical prairie dog population remains. Black-footed ferrets are an important part of our natural heritage and ours to restore and protect. The proposed resolution is to restore black-footed ferrets to their prairie home through habitat protection, captive breeding, reintroduction and translocation.
Current Events  Kit Tally 2010
Black-footed Ferrets are currently being bred in captivity at the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Black-Footed Ferret Conservation Center (Colorado), National Zoo’s Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (Virginia), Louisville Zoological Gardens (Kentucky), Cheyenne Mountain Zoo (Colorado) and the Toronto Zoo (Ontario, Canada).
Black-footed Ferrets in the News Canadian Geographic: see www.canadiangeographic.ca/magazine/dec09 |
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Black-footed Ferret Recovery Implementation Team
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