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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

Its cage opened, this ferret wasted little time before running free. Photo: Troy Fleece/WWF-US

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

The possibility of reintroducing black-footed ferrets in Canada first came up for serious consideration in the 1990s, when the Toronto Zoo became involved. At that time, the USFWS concluded that the available habitat in this country — the prairie dog colonies in and around the Frenchman Valley — was too limited to make any significant contribution to the recovery effort. Since then, the prairie dog towns have grown from 1,030 hectares in 1998 to 1,275 hectares in 2007, not enough to make much difference to the ferrets. When all the relevant factors are taken into consideration — the natural social spacing of the predators, the density of prey, and so forth — the evidence suggests that Grasslands National Park and its surroundings can support a breeding population of about 20 to 30 adult ferrets.

In the words of the “Recovery Strategy for the Black-Footed Ferret,” released in June 2009 under the aegis of Canada’s Species at Risk Act, a population of this size will remain “highly vulnerable to extinction” and will “likely require ongoing supplementation” in order to persist. Even if the prairie dogs can be encouraged to expand into adjacent areas within the park, in the limited spots where this may be possible, the Canadian ferrets are never likely to be numerous enough to get by entirely on their own.

“Frankly, I needed a little convincing at first,” concedes Pat Fargey, the species at risk/ecosystem management specialist for Grasslands. “Do we wish we had more habitat? Of course we do.” But is it important to get the ferrets out of captivity and back into the wild, throughout their range, wherever quality habitat still exists? The answer, as Fargey now sees it, is obvious.

What makes this fragile population important is not only what the Frenchman Valley has to offer but also what it lacks. These days, the major threat to the continental recovery effort is active outbreaks of plague. Yes, that plague (see sidebar below). Likely introduced to San Francisco via ship-borne rats from Asia at the turn of the last century, the disease has established itself in rodent populations across the North American plains. There, it lies quiescent until, following a microbial logic that nobody yet understands, it breaks out with full cataclysmic force in the ecosystem. In its active form, the disease is almost 100 percent fatal to both prairie dogs and black-footed ferrets.

Until recently, the future of the ferret-recovery program seemed to lie in the Conata Basin/Badlands area of South Dakota, a region with thousands of hectares of prairie dogs, hundreds of self-sustaining ferrets and no sign of the deadly pestilence. Then, in 2008, plague (which previously had been confined to the western and central plains) extended its reach to the east and put the ferrets’ last, best hope in jeopardy.

That summer, when field staff set to work dusting the South Dakota colonies with deltamethrin, to kill infected fleas, it was a tacit acknowledgement that no populations of ferrets will ever again be entirely self-sustaining. Although an oral vaccine for prairie dogs is in the works and may bring the disease under control, it will also necessitate an annual intervention. (Captive-bred ferrets receive a vaccine that provides them, though not their young, with a lifetime of protection.)

Plague is present on the Canadian prairies — researchers have found evidence of recent exposure in coyotes and farm dogs — but the incidence and the severity of the disease are both low. Best of all, no sign of plague has been detected in the Frenchman Valley prairie dogs. So while the Canadian ferrets may eventually require additional releases to bolster the population or prevent genetic collapse, there is a reasonable chance that they will be spared the Black Death. Such is the face of the wild in 2010.

“I think we can succeed with a small managed population of a species that has been gone from this part of the world for decades,” says Fargey. “I don’t mind admitting that I’m excited.”

As for myself, I don’t mind admitting that my heart is torn. As I’ve pieced this story together, I’ve often found myself replaying a snatch of conversation I overheard at the Toronto Zoo. I was making my way back from the ferret house toward the main entrance, by way of the public displays — here an endangered rhino, there a threatened kangaroo or an imperilled frog — when I found myself next to a woman with two curly-headed little girls in tow. “Well,” I heard her say to the children, “have you had enough trauma for one day then?”

Popping a couple dozen ferrets into the Frenchman Valley is not going to heal the ecological trauma of the Canadian plains. It won’t restore the periodic superabundance of insects and mice that are needed to maintain healthy populations of burrowing owls. It won’t reduce the incursion of the oil and gas industry into the habitat of sage grouse, a species that is seismically sensitive to human disturbances. It won’t bring about a significant increase in the range of prairie dogs, themselves a “species of special concern,” or even ensure the long-term survival of black-footed ferrets on Canadian soil. It won’t heal my grief about what looks like a ruined world.

I do not have ready solutions to these problems, nor do I know of anyone who does. However, at a cost of $565,000 in public funds (to cover monitoring and management over the next five years), we have been presented with a relatively inexpensive opportunity to make a small but meaningful contribution to the recovery of a species that, through human mismanagement, has come within a whisper of oblivion. The ferrets were standing ready, the prairie dog habitat was there, and it only remained for us to put the pieces back together.

That is exactly what happened on October 2, when a minivan loaded with ferrets headed up the Frenchman Valley ecotour road and, after stopping, members of the reintroduction team hiked a few kilometres to a prairie dog town. A plump rodent, standing sentinel, yip-yipped and dived down its hole as a crate was placed in the dirt. The door was opened, and a small black-masked face peered out into the wide prairie sky. Against the trends of a calamitous century, the black-footed ferret was back.

Candace Savage is the author of more than two dozen books, including 2008’s Bees: Nature’s Little Wonders. She lives in Saskatoon. Toronto-based photographer Jo-Anne McArthur is working on an ongoing documentary project called “We Animals” (www.weanimals.org).