The Nature Conservancy

Muleshoe Ranch
The first published image of the black-footed ferret appeared in Quadrupeds of North America in the 1840s. John Audubon, having seen only the animal’s pelt, mistakenly illustrated the ferret pillaging a bird’s nest—a behavior common to European ferrets.

Stream
In reality, these nocturnal predators eat prairie dogs and live in the dogs’ burrows, like this newly released kit on Smoky Valley Ranch.

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Endangered Species Finds Home on Western Range
Black-footed ferrets return to Kansas after 50 years.

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Now & Then: Long Time Gone — The Black-Footed Ferret Returns to the Prairie

By Jennifer Winger

In the heart of the central shortgrass prairie, amid dusty dog towns refrigerated by scraps of snow, a population of North America’s rarest mammal fights for its life—and the future of its species.

That may be a tall order for pint-sized predators, but the 10 black-footed ferrets released in December on The Nature Conservancy’s Smoky Valley Ranch in Logan County, Kansas, are not alone. This latest crop of captive-bred ferrets, reared by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, are part of a larger effort to bolster the population of a species that was nearly gone for good.

“When the Conservancy purchased Smoky Valley Ranch in 1999, it was a landscape at the epicenter of historic ferret sightings,” says Rob Manes, the organization’s conservation director for Kansas. “We thought it was a place where we might get ferrets on the ground someday.”

Although this carnivore once occurred throughout the western Great Plains, an estimated 80 percent of shortgrass prairie has now been converted to crops. The impact on the ferrets has been severe. For years, scientists believed the species to be extinct, until a small population was located near Meeteetse, Wyoming, in 1981.

Since then, the black-footed ferret has been the target of a nationwide recovery plan that emphasizes natural breeding, artificial insemination and the identification of places that can foster 10 or more self-sustaining, wild black-footed ferret populations.

But not everyone is ready to welcome the ferret back into the Western fold. Ferrets mean prairie dogs—these rotund rodents account for 90 percent of the ferret’s diet—and for many ranchers, prairie dogs mean pests. The land that prairie dogs favor for their labyrinthine burrows is the same land on which ranchers graze their livestock.

According to Manes, it takes large swaths of occupied prairie dog towns—some 2,000 acres at minimum—to support a population of black-footed ferrets, which rely on prairie dogs not only for food but also for burrows in which to raise their young.

“The bottom line is, most ranchers don’t like prairie dogs,” says Manes. But a small number of ranchers have agreed to participate in ferret recovery efforts, and 14 ferrets were released on nearby ranches shortly after the release on Smoky Valley Ranch. These newcomers are the first black-footed ferrets seen on Kansas soil in 50 years.

With populations also restored to grasslands on the Conservancy’s 46,000-acre ranch in northern Mexico and on its 4,000-acre ranch in the Conata Basin of South Dakota, scientists hope these historic moments become commonplace. “There are challenges ahead,” says Manes, who notes that getting the species off the federal list of threatened and endangered species is a doable, if daunting, challenge. “But so far it’s a huge conservation success.”

Nature picture credits (top to bottom): Illustration: Black-Footed Ferret from Quadrupeds of North America (1842-5) By John James Audubon (1785-1851) © Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library; Photo © Kathy Sexson; Video © TNC