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For Immediate Release
Defenders Commends BLM for Restoring Rare Ferrets
MISSOULA, Mont. -- After an absence of many decades, 20 highly endangered black-footed ferrets are being returned today to public land in central Montana by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) as part of a larger effort to restore a healthy population of these animals throughout the Great Plains.
"We are very encouraged that the BLM is taking the initiative and restoring America’s most endangered land mammal to the prairies of Montana. This area is our greatest hope for reestablishing black-footed ferrets," said Minette Johnson, Defenders of Wildlife’s Northern Rockies field representative. "We have been working long and hard to get ferrets on the ground, and today it will finally happen".
The black-footed ferret is the only ferret that is native to North America. Ferrets once lived throughout the Great Plains, wherever prairie dogs occurred, from Saskatchewan to Mexico, from the foothills of the Rockies to the Dakotas, Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma. Ferrets are 20 to 24 inches long and weigh up to two and a half pounds and distinguished by their black mask and black feet.
Black-footed ferrets are one of more than 100 prairie denizens that rely on prairie dogs for survival. Prairie dogs are 90 percent of the ferret’s food, and they also use their dens for shelter. Poisoning programs initiated in the 1900s to eliminate prairie dog colonies decimated ferrets. Habitat loss through conversion to agriculture also played a role in their demise, as well as sylvatic plague that has wiped out prairie dogs throughout the grasslands.
Thought to be extinct in the mid-1970s, a small population of black-footed ferrets was discovered in Meteetse, Wyo., in 1981. An outbreak of disease prompted the Fish and Wildlife Service to take all the remaining ferrets into captivity, and the agency has been successfully breeding them ever since.
Ferrets have been reintroduced in a number of areas throughout the country, but the place where they are doing the best is in Buffalo Gap National Grasslands in South Dakota, where there are large remaining colonies of prairie dogs and where sylvatic plague does not occur. In the last several years, biologists have come to recognize that in order to successfully restore ferrets, they must maintain and restore large chunks of prairie dog colonies. For this reason, continued prairie dog recovery in Montana will be crucial to ferrets’ survival.
The BLM releases will build on the success of ferret recovery at U.L.Bend, part of the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, where ferrets have been reintroduced since 1994. Ferrets have recolonized much of the available habitat there, and the BLM program will establish a second population to the north. Ferrets have also been reintroduced to the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, northwest of the BLM release site. The hope is to recover both ferrets and prairie dogs in the largest remaining prairie in the state, an area which includes the Russell refuge, Fort Belknap and BLM administered lands.
"We hope that the BLM maintains its commitment to prairie wildlife recovery by continuing to release ferrets and taking action to improve prairie dog habitat. The ferret remains on the edge of extinction and we must work together to ensure it does not disappear altogether," said Rodger Schlickeisen, Defenders’ president.
Defenders of Wildlife has been instrumental in restoring black-footed ferrets to Montana and nationwide. Defenders bought radio collars and hired tribal biologists to monitor ferret reintroduction efforts at Fort Belknap. The organization also participated in efforts to augment prairie dog populations at the Russell refuge and the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation to improve ferret habitat.
Defenders also provided GPS mapping units to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to help determine whether there are enough prairie dog colonies to support a ferret population. And in the area that is having great success restoring ferrets, Conata Basin in Buffalo Gap National Grassland, Defenders plans to provide money for monitoring the population increases. As a member of the Black-footed Ferret Recovery Implementation Team, Minette Johnson has also contributed to decision-making on ferret recovery nationwide.
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Defenders of Wildlife is a leading non-profit conservation organization recognized as one of the nation's most progressive advocates for wildlife and its habitat. With more than 470,000 members and supporters, Defenders of Wildlife is an effective leader on endangered species issues.
