100 Heartbeats by Jeff Corwin

Author:Jeff Corwin [Jeff Corwin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781605293240
Publisher: Potter/Ten Speed/Harmony/Rodale
Published: 2009-07-20T16:00:00+00:00

The ferret isn’t safe yet, though. Its old nemesis the plague struck a colony of 300 in South Dakota during the wet spring and early summer of 2008, killing as many as 100. The plague had spread to 9,700 of the 25,000 acres of prairie dog habitat that’s federally managed for ferrets at the US Forest Service Buffalo Gap National Grassland before it was halted in August. At the time, wildlife officials expected it to begin spreading again in the fall or the following spring. The plague is spread by fleas, so the USFWS and its partners are taking a pesticide-based approach in their efforts to stop the disease, dusting prairie dog burrows with flea powder. “We’ve gone as far as to put insecticide down in burrows by driving across prairie dog towns with four-wheelers,” says Pete Gober, USFWS black-footed ferret recovery coordinator. “There’s also a vaccine on the horizon that could be delivered in bait that prairie dogs would eat. Of course, managers put poison in bait that prairie dogs eat, like oats, to control their spread to areas where they aren’t wanted, so it would be some return of justice if we found a way to put vaccine in food to protect them from plague.” Before the use of this vaccine can be approved, its effects need to be tested on wild ferrets in a lab setting. For now, ferrets raised in captivity and those captured in the wild are protected from plague by vaccines that are delivered by way of injections.

Though a remedy for the rest of the prairie dog population might be a couple of years off, the insecticide is proving to be effective at protecting them while they wait. Biggins says he’s seen the plague’s progress come to a halt upon encountering a prairie dog town that’s been sprayed, or dusted. Whether that’s a quick fix or a long-term strategy comes down to resources. It’s an expensive treatment, and it may need to be done every year or two.

It can be difficult to get financing to save an animal as controversial as the prairie dog, regardless of the fact that the ferret’s fate is inextricably bound with its survival. As a specialist species, the ferret is completely dependent on prairie dogs for survival. A black-footed ferret eats 125 to 150 prairie dogs a year and needs contiguous stretches of prairie dog burrows for its habitat. As Gober puts it, “For a ferret, to be above ground is to be dead.” But many farmers and ranchers harbor ill will toward prairie dogs because they compete with livestock for forage and damage crops by clearing the way for the spread of weeds and stripping the areas near their burrows of most vegetation. Ranchers also want to protect their cows and horses from accidentally stepping into prairie dog holes and becoming injured.

Gober says that while we’ll never be able to regenerate the prairie dog population to its historical numbers, conservation is possible. But conservation efforts must take into account the prairie dogs’ impact on livestock foraging, whether real or perceived.

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