Prairie Dogs & Ferrets
Posted by VioletMaya on September 01, 2008 at 20:34:40:
IP:64.12.116.197
filed under: Animal News, National News Animals in the News The ferrets were once considered extinct. But one colony was discovered in Wyoming in 1981, and a captive breeding program succeeded in increasing their numbers. Since then, ferrets have been reintroduced at 17 sites in South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, Utah, Kansas and Mexico, said Nancy Warren, endangered species program leader in the Rocky Mountain Region of the U.S. Forest Service. Representatives of federal agencies and some conservation groups have taken a double-barreled approach to try to stop the spread of plague and save prairie dogs and ferrets in the 20-mile-long Conata Basin, a portion of the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands that lies just south of
I preface this article I just read with, I Do Not Understand Humans!!! 
Poisoning 11.000 acres??? As a Chemically Sensitive Naturalist person
I do not comprehend people wishing to poison away everything!!! 
Bless the prairie dogs, ferrets, fleas, plants & other animals & humans
being poisoned...Vaccinated Ferrets??? So, there will be autistic ferrets?!!
Namaste,
V~M
^^*^^
Plague Killing Prairie Dogs, Ferrets
By CHET BROKAW
,
AP
posted: 5 HOURS 1 MINUTE AGO
INTERIOR, S.D. (Sept. 1) - On the grasslands a few miles from the pinnacles and spires of Badlands National Park, federal wildlife officials have been waging a war since spring to save one of the nation's largest colonies of endangered black-footed ferrets.
Luray Parker, Wyoming Game and Fish / AP
A deadly plague carried by fleas is quickly killing dozens of prairie dogs and endangered black-footed ferrets, above, near a national park in South Dakota. "It has the capacity to take out more ferret habitat than anything we've run up against," one expert says.
The deadly disease sylvatic plague was discovered in May in a huge prairie dog town in the Conata Basin. The black-tailed prairie dog is the main prey of ferrets, and the disease quickly killed up to a third of the area's 290 ferrets along with prairie dogs.
The disease stopped spreading with the arrival of summer's hot, dry weather, but it poses a serious threat to efforts to establish stable populations of one of the nation's rarest mammals, said Scott Larson of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Pierre.
The plague, which is carried by fleas, is the biggest danger to ferrets' survival in the Conata Basin and other sites that still have ferrets, said Larson, who is coordinating ferret conservation efforts among five federal agencies.
"It has the capacity to take out more ferret habitat than anything we've run up against, and do it in such a short order," Larson said. "For ferrets, it's the most challenging issue we face."
Reintroduction efforts failed in some locations, and plague has hit most of the ferret colonies to some degree, Larson said.
Establishing many reintroduction sites helps protect the overall ferret population from being wiped out by plague, Larson said. "I guess it's the old risk management of having your eggs spread out among many baskets."