Black-footed ferrets get new home on the range

By JoAn Bjarko
North Forty News

Ongoing efforts to recover the most endangered mammal in North America --black-footed ferrets--have put Carr on the wildlife biology map. That's the address for the new National Black-footed Ferret Conservation Center at 19180 Frontage Road.

In the past year, ferrets born in captivity at the Sybille Wildlife Research and Conservation Education Center near Wheatland, Wyo., have been relocated to enclosed burrows at the new center. Their job is to learn to survive in the wild, which means they have to prove they can catch and kill prairie dogs, the ferrets' main food source.

In 1987, the United States had just 18 black-footed ferrets. To keep the small mammals from extinction, wildlife biologists made an emergency decision to capture all survivors and begin a captive breeding program. They were taken from a colony infected with canine distemper. Veterinarians vaccinated and quarantined the ferrets, and all 18 survived.

Today, their numbers are in the hundreds, but they remain a "critically endangered species," according to Mike Lockhart, black-footed ferret recovery coordinator.

Lockhart estimated about 500 ferrets are living in the wild and about 350 in captivity. The ferrets' best success story is in South Dakota, where more than 300 survive in large complexes of prairie dog colonies with no disease. Other states with recovery populations are Wyoming, Montana, Utah and Arizona, but more states, such as Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, need to join the list to recover the species, Lockhart said.

Ferrets are not released into the wild in this part of the state. Colorado's only reintroduction site is in its northwest corner.

Constructed over the past four years, the modern, spacious $8 million breeding and rearing facility at the eastern edge of Larimer County is a welcome addition to the recovery program. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service first built fenced pens with underground barriers and let prairie dogs loose to dig the burrows ferrets also call home. Biologists then moved the prairie dogs out and the ferrets in. The populations are kept separate for fear of plague killing the ferrets. There are 46 pens and room to expand to 96 on the 40-acre property north of Wellington. A breeding building, with room for 144 cages, was recently completed at the center, and contractors will soon break ground on the administration building. There's also a manager's residence.

The facility is not open to the public now, but plans call for an educational section in the future administration building. Visitors will be able to learn about the black-footed ferret recovery program, but won't be able to visit the quarantined areas.

Dean Biggins, a research wildlife biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Fort Collins, has worked with the recovery program since the 1980s. He called the captive breeding program a success story, but said reintroduction of ferrets has been a mixed bag, partly because biologists still have lots to learn about plague.

"We still don't know a lot about the ecology of the disease out there in the wild," Biggins said. He is focusing his research on prairie dog habitat these days.

To reduce the chance of plague among the endangered black-footed ferrets, the prairie dog colony adjacent to the ferret facility is regularly dusted for fleas, and prairie dogs fed to the captive ferrets are quarantined for 21 days.

The ferrets' "halfway house" near Carr will also improve their chances of survival with more than hunting skills. Lockhart noted that when the recovery program first released ferrets into the wild, the naive animals were "lapped up by predators."

"Preconditioning helped," he said.