News - the first of a new series of quarterly updates
 

The Black-Footed Ferret Recovery Implementation Team
The black-footed ferret is one of the most endangered mammals in the world. Multiple partners have worked since 1981 to conserve black-footed ferrets. In 1996 the Black-footed Ferret Recovery Implementation Team (BFFRIT) was created to more effectively coordinate and integrate the expertise and resources of various parties contributing to the recovery of the black-footed ferret.



Settler with plow

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).

To date, over 7,000 kits have been born since captive breeding was initiated in 1985. The majority of kits are born in May.

Kit Tally for the 2010 season is 270 as of June 25th!


Black-footed Ferrets in the News

Canadian Geographic: see www.canadiangeographic.ca/magazine/dec09
Information regarding Black-footed Ferret Recovery Strategy in Canada: see http://www.sararegistry.gc.ca/species/speciesDetails_e.cfm?sid=138
Parks Canada - Grasslands National Park: see http://www.pc.gc.ca/pn-np/sk/grasslands/index.aspx.
PBS: see http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/the-loneliest-animals/introduction/4898/;
WWF: see http://www.worldwildlife.org/species/ninetowatch2009.html;
Time: see http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1888728_1888736_1888858,00.html
Audubon: see http://www.audubonmagazine.org/


 
 

Copyright ©2009
Black-footed Ferret Recovery Implementation Team
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Revised – May, 2009