The black-footed ferret is one of the most endangered
mammals in North America, but new research suggests that these charismatic
critters can persist if conservationists think big enough.
Decades of human persecution (e.g., poisoning) of the
ferret's favorite prey, prairie dogs, and severe outbreaks of plague and
distemper led to its extinction in the wild in 1987. Since then, thousands of
captive-raised ferrets have been released across North America, and at least
four wild populations have been successfully reestablished. However, a new
factor threatens to undermine these hard-fought conservation gains: the
continued eastward spread of the exotic bacterial disease plague, which is a
quick and efficient killer of prairie dogs, and is caused by the same microbe
that is implicated in the Black Death pandemics of the Middle Ages.