Homecoming

Not terribly long ago, the black-footed ferret vanished from the wild. Today, experts are making plans to return this endangered species to the same site where humans once thought we had seen the very last of this iconic prairie creature.

On the early morning of November 2, 1985 I watched a pickup truck crest the ridge of a dusty Wyoming two-track ranch road and disappear over the horizon. Inside it was what I thought at the time might be the last black-footed ferret ever to live in the wild. I was dead tired, having been up for the past week trying to catch that ferret, spending nights of driving laps around prairie dog colonies – the habitat and food source of black-footed ferrets – peering out to the end of the beam of a strong spotlight to find her. It was the end of a tumultuous fall, one that had been filled with bitter accusations and petty politics, and I was really too worn down to be much more than philosophical about her departure. There was no fanfare, no media presence—nothing that would have marked the day as remarkable. Even though it might have been the day that a species went extinct in the wild.

I slowly drove toward a collection of other pickups, around which stood what was at the time the entire world’s collection of black-footed ferret expertise, enjoying the sunrise and some cans of beer (an anomaly only for those who are not adapted to a workday that ends at 7:00 am). The talk was also of a kind unique to the patter of biologists:

“Where did you find her?”
“She was down at the south end in a hole with the male kit.”
“Across the road?”
“No, up against the dike…I didn’t see the other two until nearly dawn, down by the creek.”

There was a pause, and someone else said, “Maybe they’ll make it.”
Nobody spoke as we all considered the likelihood of that in our heads.

The Rapid Decline of a Prairie Icon

Eight months earlier, none of us could have predicted that this was how the Meeteetse population of black-footed ferrets – the last in the wild – might come to its end. By July, signs of trouble had started: family groups of ferrets had begun to disappear. By August, it was clear this trend wasn’t ending. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had given authority over this last population of endangered ferrets to the state of Wyoming, so it was to them that we turned for help. I was working for a consulting research firm, and we pled with Wyoming officials to act quickly to determine the cause of the decline. We knew that the steep population drop could soon lead to total population collapse.

Instead of heeding our warning, the state accused us of trying to stir up public hostility against the game and fish department, of fabricating findings, and worse, of incompetence. The skirmishes that took place in the press and at professional meetings carried on through the fall, as ferrets continued to vanish. They only ended on October 22, when six ferrets that had been captured to form a captive breeding population all died from canine distemper, a disease that they had brought with them from the wild.

There is little satisfaction in being proven right in a case like that. The only solution, as everyone agreed, was to try to capture the remaining wild ferrets, now reduced to only a handful, and bring them in to breed in captivity, in the hopes of one day releasing them again into the wild. Which brought us to that November morning.

Even then, politics again intervened. Though they were all desperately needed for the breeding program, we were told that night not to catch every ferret. The state had a new theory: perhaps the wild ferrets had temporarily fled, and would return next year. As preposterous as this seemed, Wyoming officials seemed happy to risk the fate of the species rather than admit they had watched them spiral toward extinction – and done nothing.

After that night, we knew of six ferrets still in the wild. Four of them did survive to the following summer, but the two others that I had tried to catch that night were never seen again. Through sheer dumb luck, the other four lived and had litters in the wild the following summer. But it was still too late. Those last wild ferrets were caught and brought into captivity the following year. A lone male eluded biologists until the year after that. In the end, that was the last day before extinction of the Meeteese population in the wild.

As it turns out, distemper was not the only disease working against the ferrets in 1985. Sylvatic plague, a bacterial infection, had also started in on the prairie dogs earlier in the summer. We didn’t know it then, but later studies would show that ferrets die from plague as well, something that at the time was not thought likely. In hindsight, it’s almost certain that ferrets were dying that summer from both diseases. And while the remaining ferrets were plucked to safety, the plague epidemic raged on in prairie dogs, ultimately wiping out nearly all of them at Meeteetse over the next two years. The entire food web that once supported the only known ferret population in North America had effectively collapsed. The ferrets, now in cages, no longer had a home to return to. The prairies around Meeteetse were a sadly empty place.

New Beginnings

Thirty years provides a lot of time for healing. Some weren’t convinced it would work, but the Meeteetse ferrets eventually bred successfully in captivity. None of the original founders are alive today, but their descendants have been reintroduced to 27 sites in the U.S. and even Canada and Mexico. Plague has unfortunately spread farther, but with decades of research, we have new ways to battle it. The ferret program, too, has grown. Hundreds of biologists and conservationists are now involved. The program has evolved from control by a single state to a model of collaboration among a wide array of stakeholders, all of whom play a part in making decisions about the fate of the species. Most importantly, after decades, the prairie dogs at Meeteetse have slowly built their populations back, not to the size of their former colonies, but in good numbers.

Now, Wyoming has proposed bringing the ferret back to Meeteetse, the last place in North America where they were found in the wild. This is partly the result of a new federal rule (supported by Defenders) that encourages ferret reintroductions in Wyoming with less red tape, and of renewed interest by another generation of officials in Wyoming. Most importantly, this reintroduction will happen because the landowners of Meeteetse have a long connection to the black-footed ferret, and want to see it returned. If approved, the reintroduction will happen this summer. As the great-great-great-great grandchildren of the last wild ferrets explore their new home, I imagine them entering the subterranean lairs, sleeping among the bones of their ancestors, brushing against the claw marks of some other ancient ferret in the tunnel wall. And I imagine biologists again standing around with the morning sun on their faces after a night of looking for ferrets when they emerge from their tunnels, wondering where that male kit went. It feels good to come full circle.

Steve Forrest is Rockies and Plains senior representative for Defenders of Wildlife and co-author of Prairie Night: Black-footed Ferrets and the Recovery of Endangered Species. He worked to save the last of the black-footed ferrets in Meteetsee, Wyoming in the 1980s, and coauthored the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s black-footed ferret recovery plan.