Black-footed Ferret Management and Policy

Defenders of Wildlife is:

  • working to end the destruction of black-footed ferret habitat on our public lands;
  • helping wildlife-friendly ranchers save Kansas’ largest prairie dog colony for future black-footed ferret reintroduction.

Ending the destruction of black-footed ferret habitat on public lands

Conata Basin is a 73,000 acre area within the 580,000 acre Buffalo Gap National Grassland in southwestern South Dakota. Between 20,000 and 30,000 acres of this area are occupied by prairie dog colonies, making this the largest prairie dog complex and therefore the best black-footed ferret habitat on public land in the entire Great Plains. Over 200 ferrets – one third of the world’s ferret population – call this area home.

But now Conata Basin is under attack. The U.S. Forest Service is planning to destroy up to 2/3 of the prairie dogs in Conata Basin beginning in fall 2007. This would significantly reduce the number of ferrets that could survive here and would also impact the entire ferret recovery effort because wild-born ferrets are trapped from Conata Basin and used to populate other sites.

Defenders of Wildlife is working to protect Conata Basin from this planned destruction.

Learn more here

Helping wildlife-friendly ranchers save Kansas’s largest prairie dog colony for future black-footed ferret reintroduction

County commissioners plan to spread poison across 10,000 acres of private property in Logan County, Kansas against the will of two landowners, as part of a prairie dog eradication program authorized by a century-old state law. The wildlife-friendly ranchers who own this land refuse to eradicate all their prairie dogs because of the importance of prairie dogs to a healthy prairie ecosystem. The ranchers want to reintroduce black-footed ferrets to their property, and Defenders of Wildlife is helping them fight the efforts of the county to poison their land.

Learn more here

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Federal actions