Fight for survival

Press, 30 September 1986, Page 17

Fight for survival

Before anyone enters the special room on the University of Wyoming campus, he must shower and put on a disinfected coat, overshoes, and surgical mask.

The “patients” inside are not necessarily sick or even feeble. But they are, among the last of a species, in a very critical condition.

They are 11 black-footed ferrets, small members of the weasel family with black paws and face masks, brought in from the wild this year to go into quarantine in Laramie, Wyoming. If they emerge disease-free, the ferrets will join six others at a Wyoming Game and Fish Department breeding facility 72 kilometres north-east of Laramie.

The 17 captive ferrets, along with one or two others that were seen in the wild this year, may be the last black-footed ferrets on earth. Human destruction of their habitat — they live in prairie-dog burrows — and recent waves of a fatal disease have left the species hanging on the edge of extinction. “With this animal, things could go either way,” says Dr Tim Clark, a biologist who has pursued and studied the ferrets for 13 years with support from the National Geographic Society. “It’s too soon to tell how it’s going to come out.” A long, lithe mammal with eyes that shine emerald in the night, the nocturnal black-footed ferret runs with the grace of a cheetah and plays like a kitten. Spirits rose this year when some ferrets, most of them young, were sighted near Meeteetse, Wyoming, the site of the original discovery of a ferret in 1981. “We went into last winter with an estimate of two to 10 individuals, and since more than half Z/f a population mt|’ die during a

winter, we could have ended up with almost nothing in the spring,” Dr Clark says. But neither the wild population nor the captive group was large enough to ensure the species’ survival. “We had a loser on both ends,” Dr Clark says. All of the wild ferrets are targeted for the breeding programme. “We really need 20 animals for a sound genetic base,” says Dr Ulysses Seal, a specialist in animal population management who is advising the project leaders. “These captive animals will be the founders of new colonies to be started in the wild.” Though reluctant to attempt captive breeamg in the past, the

officials and scientists now agree that it represents the only hope for the species. “Those in the wild are at greater risk — from predation, starvation, injury, or disease,” says Dr Tom Thorne, veterinarian for the Wyoming Fish and Game Department, which has primary responsibility for the animals. Two juveniles from one litter were lost in August, in spite of the monitoring. The authorities concede that captive breeding should have been started several years ago when the ferret population was relatively large — 129 individuals. That was,before sylvatic plague struck ttfe prairie dogs

that are the ferrets’ prime food source. They are determined not to repeat one of the greatest mistakes of the past, when six ferrets were housed together in the initial captive-breeding effort. By the time it was discovered in 1985 that two of the captive ferrets were suffering from canine distemper, they had fatally infected the other four. By then distemper had taken a severe toll in the wild, and only six more could be found.

Spring came and went this

(northern hemisphere) summer without successful laboratory breeding, and if no mating occurs next spring, Dr Seal says, artificial insemination will begin. The black-footed ferret has never been bred successfully in captivity. Meanwhile, the search for more of them goes on. Each midnight in Wyoming, a patrol sets out with spotlights to search 120 square miles of prairie-dog habitat for signs of ferrets — their characteristic green eyeshine, or perhaps a litter of young scampering above ground before they go into the burrow for the day. A $lO,OOO reward has been posted for a black-footed ferret lead in Montana, where the last verified sighting occurred eight years ago. “This is a last-ditch effort to see if somebody knows something we don’t,” says John Cada, a state biologist. “There’s probably less than a 50-50 chance.” Five years ago Clark paid a reward of $5OO. He had been searching for ferrets for eight years when he learned that a Meeteetse ranch dog had killed one. It was the first ferret found since a South Dakota group vanished in 1974. The ferret is a casualty of a large-scale eradication campaign against the prairie dog, long considered a pest by ranchers. In the late 1800 s prairie dogs were estimated to number more than five billion, capable of sustaining tens of thousands of ferrets. Since 1900, prairie dogs have been reduced by 99 per cent in some states. Now, federal money — $500,000 for the first year — is being spent on a desperate effort to save them.

BARBARA MOFFET,

National Geographic News Service $