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December 2009 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Feature: Black-footed ferret Feature: Wildlife management Feature: Blue whales The Inside Story Editor’s Notebook Reverberations À la carte Mosaic Reviews

The Toronto ferrets went through a preconditioning “boot camp” in Colorado. Photo: Ryan Hagerty/United States Fish and Wildlife Service

VIDEO PHOTO ESSAY FEATURE STORY AND EXTRAS Return of the ferret Ferret facts A deadly plague Mapping ferret communities Lakota celebrate the ferret’s return Photo Club: Field Report Wildlife conservation

Although southern Saskatchewan is where these hopes will play out, it’s not where the story begins. To follow the ferrets on their journey home and to glimpse what’s involved in bringing a species back from the dead, we must shift our gaze halfway across the continent, to the Toronto Zoo. Here, in an unassuming building on a back lot, carefully secluded from the madding crowds, specialist zookeepers have been breeding the black-footed ferret in captivity for almost two decades. As the only Canadian partner in a multi-faceted, multi-institution captive-breeding program overseen by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), the Toronto facility has, over the years, contributed hundreds of kits to reintroduction attempts in northern Mexico and across the western states. The results have been heartening.

And that number, though still modest, becomes all the more impressive when you hear about the successive calamities the ferrets and their human champions have faced and overcome. We sit in the staff area of the breeding facility, with our feet encased in hospital-style plastic booties and the ferrets in quarantine on the other side of a closed door, as Franke (herself a former keeper of the Toronto ferrets) and current incumbent Paula Roberts fill me in on the tortuous backstory.

Lakota Celebrate the Ferret’s Return

For the Wood Mountain Lakota of southwest Saskatchewan, the reintroduction of the black-footed ferret is more than an important step in the conservation of a species — it’s a powerful symbol marking the rebirth of their nation, says Lakota spiritual leader Larry McKay.

Once facing annihilation themselves in the 19th century, after battles with the United States Army to uphold their territory on the Northern Plains, the Wood Mountain Lakota hope the ferrets will flourish in parallel with their community.

In more prosperous times, black-footed ferrets shared the plains with the black-tailed prairie dog, often living in their dens after preying on them. Observing this relationship, the Lakota realized that ferrets play a vital role in stabilizing the prairie dog population; without them, prairie dogs overrun the region.

Known among the Lakota as “itopta sapa,” the black-footed ferret’s name literally means “black-striped across the face.” To mark the reintroduction of the species on October 2, the Lakota held a traditional pipe ceremony on the plains of Grasslands National Park.

During this sacred event, a pipe was loaded with small amounts of tobacco and a mix of indigenous herbs. As the pipe is passed, smoke coming from the mouth symbolizes the truth being spoken, and the plumes of smoke provide a path for prayers.

After the ceremony, Hartley Bear from the Standing Buffalo First Nation, a Sioux band near Regina, preformed a grass dance. During the dance, performers execute steady flowing motions to move the fringe of yarn on a traditional dress as though it were swaying grass. Among some First Nations, this is thought of as a ceremonial healing dance.

Right before the release, Lakota Wood Mountain Chief David Ogle gave a traditional star blanket to Grasslands National Park. Its eight-pointed morning star pattern is deeply rooted in symbolism, representing a respect for the land and the celestial bodies that watch over Mother Earth.

Sarah Everest
(Photo: Parks Canada)

The saga begins at least one million years ago, when black-footed ferrets and Siberian polecats evolved from a common ancestor, either in North America or across the Bering land bridge in Asia. Eventually, the ferrets took up residence in prairie dog colonies. Here was everything a ferret could ask for in one convenient package: food (prairie dogs constitute 90 percent of the black-footed ferret’s diet), protection from predators (simply scoot down a prairie dog hole) and den sites for resting and rearing kits (ditto).

And so things continued until the late 19th century, when the plains were suddenly overwhelmed by an influx of agricultural settlers, armed with plows, strychnine and guns, who set about ridding the country of what they saw as pestiferous rodents. With prairie dogs reduced to two percent of their historic range, the ferrets (which, as territorial animals, were always sparsely distributed) began to diminish toward the vanishing point.

As early as 1900, Manitoba naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton was sounding the alarm. “The Blackfoot,” he warned, “always rare, is becoming rarer. Now that the big Demon of Commerce has declared war on the Prairie-dog … the Ferret, too, will pass.… Does [that thought] inspire you to some action? If so, what? There is but little time left in which to do it.”

But no action was taken then or for decades afterwards. “It’s human nature, I guess,” says Franke with a rueful laugh. “We still haven’t learned. We don’t do something when there are several thousand left. We wait until there are only a handful.”

The black-footed ferret reached the handful stage in South Dakota in the late 1960s, when the only known members of the last known wild population were brought into captivity in a dicey attempt to save the species. Without a safe vaccine for canine distemper (several ferrets were killed by their shots) and unable to get the survivors to reproduce, state biologists were forced to stand by and watch a species disappear.

And so the story might have ended were it not for a Wyoming ranch dog named Shep that went out hunting one night in 1981 and came home with some sort of slinky, masked, black-footed, weasel-type carcass. Intrigued by this unusual trophy, Shep’s owner took the skin to a taxidermist, who must have thought he was seeing a ghost. And that’s how the Meeteetse, Wyoming, population of 129 ferrets was discovered. Tragically, in a few short years, both the Meeteetse ferrets and their prairie dog landlords were struck down by epidemics, and the black-footed ferret seemed doomed to extinction for a second time.

From fall 1985 to spring 1987, with the ferret population in free fall, the USFWS, in collaboration with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, again began bringing in the survivors — 18 in all — in the distant hope of establishing a captive population. This time, against the odds, they succeeded. Equipped with improved vaccines and a growing knowledge of the animal’s reproductive physiology, researchers helped enable 15 of the captive ferrets to mate and produce offspring, although only seven were genetically varied enough to be called “founder” animals.

“The whole world population of ferrets, including the ones we have here, is based on those seven founders,” says Franke, nodding toward the room next door. “We [humans] have increased the rate of extinction — and of animals becoming endangered — exponentially. We’ve sped it up so fast, we have an obligation to do what we can to help.”