in Washington, D.C., where she underwent an additional month of quarantine at Patuxent Wildlife Research Center prior to being placed in a cage adjoining FM-71–1 and FM-71–2 on November 6.
The records I found in the Patuxent attic on ferret husbandry for the three individuals were exhaustive and repetitive. They were being fed a daily diet of 50 grams of dry mink feed, 100 grams of dried dog food, and 20 cc of corn oil—a far cry from killing a prey item that outweighs you by a quarter of your body weight. Prairie dogs bite with sharp incisors, mob you with family members if you venture out during the day, and bury you underground when you are sensed in one of their burrows. Wild lions hunting wildebeest on the Kalahari have nothing on the black-footed ferret hunting prairie dogs on the Great Plains.
But now this relationship was being lost, prairie dog without predator, predator without prey. The ferret population in Mellette County was in a mysterious and precipitous decline. Between 1973 and 1974, three more Mellette County ferrets were trapped and brought to Patuxent. After 1974, no ferrets were seen in Mellette County or in any of the adjacent counties where they had been observed in the past. Ferret searches intensified as the newly established Black-footed Ferret Recovery Team developed a recovery plan in the event that captive breeding might take off or another population might be uncovered. Hundreds of reports came in of ferrets spotted in Kansas, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Nebraska, Canada, and South Dakota. Most of these reports were of little use, unable to be confirmed or far away from prairie dog colonies where ferrets were likely confused with long-tailed weasels. Other reports were more credible, like one dated August 6, 1974, from eminent big cat expert Dr. Maurice Hornocker, who reported seeing a ferret running across Interstate 80 twenty miles west of Laramie, Wyoming, at 9:30 in the morning. All of the reports were scribbled on or stapled to a piece of paper on which it was written that they were unable to be verified or not worth following up before they were filed away only for official records. At the same time, black-footed ferrets were officially considered extirpated in Canada, as well as Texas and Oklahoma, with other states to follow soon afterward.
At Patuxent, captive breeding had stalled. The black-footed ferrets were not breeding successfully like their European polecat surrogates with which the biologists had been practicing for years. Husbandry and feeding regimes were altered and tested with almost no success. In 1976 and 1977, one of the two surviving females produced a litter each year, but all ten kits were either stillborn or died within days of birth.
At the bottom of the last box of files, the final report was dated 1979. By then all captive female ferrets had died, and only a single male remained. He perished later that year, and I thought that there could be few things as delicate as a black-footed ferret. The last individual of an entire species was housed in a building just down the road in suburban Maryland, minutes from the Baltimore–Washington Parkway, and less than an hour from the White House. The leading experts in the world on captive breeding and species conservation had failed. I looked for other file boxes with ferret records. I believed there must be more boxes, more letters, more reports. Something to continue the story, let me believe there were still hidden corners of the western U.S. where the species might persist.
I went down to my father’s office. He was on the phone so I waited just outside the door, trying to listen for the end of his conversation. I was confused, distraught, I wanted to know there were still ferrets out there. I wanted him to tell me they had been rediscovered. As he hung up the phone I walked in and sat in the wooden chair opposite his oak desk.
“Has anyone seen a ferret since Patuxent?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he said. “I believe there are ferret biologists working in Wyoming.”
CHAPTER 3
Rediscovery
By the early 1980s, 412 preserved black-footed ferret specimens were known to exist in museums, and Elaine Anderson tried to hunt down each one. She eventually created a map of dots showing the collection points of specimens that dated back to the 1880s. The map she came up with roughly tracked the extent of the known range of three prairie dog species (the Gunnison’s, white-tailed, and black-tailed), bounded by Texas and Northern Mexico to the south and by Montana and southern Saskatchewan to the north. The black-footed ferret was a uniquely North American species.
Even prior to the loss of what was known as the last wild ferret population, in Mellette County, South Dakota, in 1974, because of the large potential range map and knowledge of how secretive the species was, some people still harbored hope that another ferret population would be discovered. Tim Clark was one of them. In 1976, after completing his dissertation on prairie dog ecology, with Tom Campbell he created the Biota Research and Consulting firm—a generic title for a small and highly specialized group that focused their efforts on the goal of being the ones to rediscover black-footed ferrets.
Rediscovery of a black-footed ferret population was the kind of event that would make you a celebrity overnight. For a young scientist, it could kick-start a research program and form a funding platform that would last for years if not decades. A hunt that, because of the black-footed ferret’s endangered status, had to begin with a permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Mr. Ron Nowak
Office of Rare and Endangered Wildlife
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Department of the Interior
Washington, D.C.
Dear Mr. Nowak:
I am currently making plans for the 1976 black-footed ferret search in Wyoming. As you know my work over the last two years was an extensive search and yielded several localities where reports of ferret sightings are concentrated. What I plan to do this year is conduct an intensive search in one or more areas. The first two areas I would like to thoroughly examine are prairie dog concentrations 1) along Powder River and its principal drainages in NE Wyoming, and 2) Big Sandy BLM area of SW Wyoming.
In a detailed report which I sent your office in late 1974 I discussed the limitations of employing the techniques used in South Dakota [spotlighting] in the sagebrush areas of Wyoming. As a result of this presentation, I would like to as part of this years search to make application to try to live trap ferrets in these two areas. I would use #202 Tomahawk live traps. These are the same design I’ve used over the last year on my pine marten study in Grand Teton National Park.
If a ferret were captured I would follow these procedures: 1) Wyoming Game and Fish biologists and wardens from the area, along with U.S. Fish and Wildlife personnel and BLM biologists would be notified of the find, 2) they would be invited to come to the capture site to observe the ferret, and 3) the ferret would be released in their presence as soon as possible at the capture site. This procedure would conclusively demonstrate the presence of a ferret!
Sincerely,
Tim W. Clark, Ph.D.
Over the following years, Clark and Campbell’s personal mission extended beyond just Wyoming. The search for a remnant ferret population eventually led them to visit a total of eleven states, spending long nights on the prairie searching for tracks, trenches (where ferrets have excavated a prairie dog burrow by kicking dirt out a four-foot stripe of loose dirt), any kind of ferret sign. They surveyed local biologists and took to the air to search for potential large prairie dog colonies, working on the bottom-up hypothesis that if they could find a large prairie dog colony, they might just be able to find a place where ferrets were able to sustain themselves—corners of the prairie where maps were blank and others might have forgotten to check. After exhausting their hunches and with no individual success, they eventually cast their net wider by offering a $250 reward to anyone with information leading to a confirmed ferret sighting.
At
