Ferret Fiasco

Archie Carr III

Ferret Fiasco
I came to the New York Zoological Society, now known as the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), mostly to attend to conservation challenges in the Tropics, in the Developing World. The abundance of species is enormous in the Tropics, and the obstacles to getting anything done to help them are generally daunting: The makings of a busy career. But I soon discovered that conservation disasters were not restricted to the Third World. I stepped right into one in Wyoming early in my tenure at WCS headquarters in New York. In 1981 we began receiving news from the US Fish and Wildlife Service that the black-footed ferret had been re-discovered. The little weasel-like animal had not been seen for nearly 10 years, and was presumed by many to have gone extinct. That was a particularly grim accomplishment because very few vertebrates had yet gone extinct in North America in spite of the abuses suffered by wildlife and its habitat during the history of the country. So word that the ferret of the Great Plains had not joined the vanished ranks of the ivory-billed woodpecker, the passenger pigeon, and the Carolina parakeet, after all, was met with excitement in my office at the Bronx Zoo, and across the country. Shep, a ranch dog, killed the first ferret seen in 1981 near the town of Meeteetse, Wyoming. Lucille Hogg, Sheps owner, took the carcass to a taxidermist, and the authorities were notified. In short order, more ferrets were found living in and around the burrows of a white-tailed prairie dog colony. The black-footed ferret, an animal very similar in size and appearance to the Old World ferrets seen in pet stores, preys on prairie dogs for food, and uses the burrows for shelter. The two species share an intimate, if mortal, bond. In fact, so tight is the association of the ferret and the prairie dog that it was a prolonged effort to exterminate the prairie dogs that brought the ferret so near to doom in the first place. This sad tale was first laid out in detail in a WCS-sponsored study by Carl Koford and published in a 1958 article entitled Prairie Dogs, White Faces and Blue Grama. Characteristically, the prairie dog towns are, or at least were, enormous. They might extend for miles across the plains; thousands of burrows to a single colony. The prairie dogs and their faithful little predator, the ferret, were found from Canada, across the Great Basin, and into Mexico. The range was like that of the American bison, and the destruction almost as complete. Cattle ranchers and farmers did not favor the prairie dog colonies. They occupied space; the burrows posed a threat to the legs of cattle and horses; but most of all, the prairie dog, an herbivore, was considered a competitor to grazing stock. So, late in the 19th century, and continuing for decades, the prairie dogs were killed. Poisoned grain was strewn around the colony. The prairie dogs would eat it and die, and, some biologists speculate, the ferrets might eat the poisoned rodent and die, as well. But, mostly, it was the disappearance of the great prairie dog towns that put the ferret in jeopardy. The prey base evaporated across thousands of miles of western land. There were a lot of field biologists out there in Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas, and they vainly searched for signs of the black-footed ferret during the 1970s. Shep, the alert

ranch dog, electrified the American conservation community with his catch of a young male ferret. I spoke to Bill Conway, our director, about the ferret. I thought the discovery offered a fine opportunity for WCS to make a contribution. As a conservation group, we were already well known for having a species-oriented approach to our work. As with the African elephant, the panda, the jaguar in Brazil, it was the custom in WCS to study individual species of animals in their natural habitat, and draw conclusions about their conservation needs. Our field program was not particularly active in the US at the time, but we had been in the past, especially in the West, in the very heart of ferret country. We had a surprisingly distinguished history there, in my estimation. Our first director, William Hornaday, wrote on the plight of the mountain sheep in North America in 1900, five years after the Society was chartered. The bighorn sheep became the first symbol of the New York Zoological Society. We had supported grizzly bear and mountain lion research. However, saving the American bison was perhaps our most spectacular achievement in the western states. In 1905, the American Bison Society was founded at the Bronx Zoo in the Lion House, a building across the way from my own office. With Hornaday once again in charge, an inventory was made of captive bison at zoos and on private ranches. The count was 1644 American bison remaining in the world. The decision was made to bring as many of these animals as possible together, breed them up, and transport captive-reared bison out west to be released into the wild; into newly declared bison ranges. Bison herds from the Bronx Zoo were reestablished in Montana, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Nebraska. As a newcomer to the Bronx Zoo, that story impressed me. And it immediately occurred to me that the black-footed ferret might benefit from a similar kind of intervention: Similar methods, and in the exact same places as the mighty bison. Species by species, the prairies might be restored. That was compelling. Also compelling was the appearance of the black-footed ferret. The tubular, elastic mustelid has a handsome black mask on a pale, buff-colored background. Black fore feet are frequently in evidence to the lucky spotter. The ferret is cute. Easily as cute as the Giant panda, and that black and white, cuddly icon had helped make the World Wildlife Fund the envy of fund-raising conservation groups around the world. The imagery that could be associated with a good project to save the ferret might be spectacular. As I mulled these possibilities over in the fall of 1981, the phone rang at my office at the zoo. The caller introduced himself as Tim Clark, and he had been looking for black-footed ferrets since 1973. He had an opportunity to be the lead biologist in an effort to study the colony of prairie dogs and ferrets at Meeteetse, Wyoming. He asked if WCS would be interested in helping him. I almost dropped the phone. Tim Clark was wise and well read. He knew of some of the history of WCS with Western conservation projects. He knew we were putting an emphasis on funding projects in Tropical countries, these days, but he sought us out with a very logical question on his mind: You have helped in important ways in the western United States in the past. Would you care to try again, and carry on that tradition? It made sense to me. And with Bill Conways support, it made sense to WCS. We issued our first grant to Tim Clark early in 1982.

Tim had a small company called Biota Research and Consulting, Inc., with an office in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He was also an adjunct faculty member at the Idaho State University. In his career, he had made himself an expert in the biology and ecology of the Great Plains. Tim put his credentials on the line, and got support from numerous sources. One of the earliest, and most vigorous backers was the Wildlife Preservation Trust International (WPTI), an American conservation group with ties back to the famous British zoologist, Gerald Durrell. Durrell had launched an international program some years before from his base on the Jersey Islands. He was a zoo man at his core, and I wondered if that captive management tradition lingered in the new organization, WPTI, and if it would have any bearing on their interest in saving the ferret. In the ensuing months, such big, national conservation groups as the World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy and the National Geographic Society contributed to the ferret project, as did many smaller organizations from all around the country. Tim wrote that the ferret project received as much as $550,000 from private sources by the mid1980s. It was as I had hoped and expected: The American conservation community, the private sector, responded with enthusiasm and generosity to the almost unheard of rediscovery of a presumed-extinct species. The private sector did well. It was the government that was the problem. What transpired over the next 5 years shocked everyone concerned, enriched the annals of conservation history in the United States, and brought the ferret about as close to extinction as it is possible to: 18 animals left on earth; only 7 of them viable for reproductive purposes. Part of the problem was endemic to Wyoming. I saw a rusty sign on the road between Cheyenne and Jackson Hole that read: Impeach Earl Warren. I suppose it had been there since 1962, and no one had thought it out of date -- or out of place. But the reputation for independent, perhaps conservative thinking in the West didnt bother me much. In WCS, we worked all over the world, in dozens of different cultures and value systems. We simply had to study these new circumstances and adjust to them, or fail in our efforts to advance wildlife conservation. Whats more, I was certain the excitement of the moment, the chance to save the ferret, would mask political differences and unite everyone in a shared agenda for success. The ferrets near Meeteetse had been discovered in the fall of 1981. In February of that same year, President Ronald Reagan had sworn in James Watt as his Secretary of the Interior. The National Audubon Society would eventually say that Watt was "arguably the most anti-environment secretary ever. Bad luck for the black-footed ferret! I bring up James Watt not just to pick at a scab on the corpus of American environmental stewardship. The ferrets recovery depended upon the Endangered Species Act. All of us, the conservation NGOs, the field biologists, like Tim Clark and his colleagues, as well as the state agency staff with interests in the ferret, were bound together by the provisions of the ESA. At least, thats what I thought. It was required by federal law that every effort be made to save the little polecat. I took that as a given, a federal mandate, an underlying premise for all future planning, discussion and action. In fact, by developing a funding proposal with Tim Clark, I allowed myself to believe that WCS would be allying itself with the ESA, and doing the country a favor. It was in the national interest to do this job.

The Endangered Species Act is graced with a Section 6, which holds that local state agencies must be involved with species recovery to the maximum extent practicable. The US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the chief federal agency responsible for the ferret under the ESA, was required to share these duties with appropriate local agencies, in this case the Wyoming Game and Fish Department (WGF). That was fine, in principal. I had seen it work in Florida, and the local wildlife officers performed very professionally, locally implementing federal mandates. But that seemingly logical, potentially cost effective, way to save a species was choked by the politics of the day. There was a New Federalism in the land, particularly welcomed in Wyoming. States rights would save the West from imagined threats. And James Watt, who, it so happens, was born in Wyoming, was anti-ESA to begin with. Before he was forced to resign in 1983, through budget cuts and other disincentives, Watt curtailed any vigorous intervention by FWS staff on behalf of the ferret. Section 6 allowed Wyoming Game and Fish a significant role in ferret recovery; the James Watt Interior Department gave the state agency effective dominance over events. The Fish and Wildlife Service was an emasculated presence, and, as a result, things would go haywire for the ferret later, in 1985. Tim Clark and his associates spent the intervening years studying the Meeteetse ferrets. They needed to get a good count of the animals, and to monitor for changes in these numbers from year to year. The ferret is nocturnal for the most part, so under the best of circumstances, counting them is challenging. Tims team often used snow to great advantage in monitoring the ferrets. Tracks in new snow were a convenient indirect way to get a handle on population size, and behavior. Sometimes the trail in the snow showed not just evidence of a ferrets passing, but would be accompanied by a large drag mark of a dead prairie dog: Signs of a successful hunt. The ferrets also left very distinctive diggings, long low heaps of dirt dug up from a prairie dog burrow, strung out across the snow. The diggings were visible from far away, and helped guide the field people to useful evidence. Snow tracking had its limitations, though. The ferrets were out in the wide-open Wyoming prairie. Tim told me of temperatures reaching 40F below zero out there, with gale force winds. Treacherous conditions for the ferret hunters. Some ferrets were captured in wire traps and equipped with radio collars, allowing close scrutiny of a few animals. But, spotlighting at night, looking for the brilliant green reflection of their eyes, proved the most productive way to keep tabs on ferret numbers. Tim Clarks close friend and associate, Denise Casey, wrote in a book for children called Black-Footed Ferret, about a particularly moving type of night-time encounter with ferrets; a mother and her kits: Together, they look like a toy train, each little ferret closely following the one ahead of it, their eyes shining like headlights in the reflection of our spotlight. Tims research would produce very basic data required for a strategy to save the ferrets. From the very beginning, it was assumed the recovery strategy would call for capturing ferrets from the wild, breeding them in suitable facilities, and, over time, releasing progeny from this captive lot. One or more captive colonies not only had the promise of yielding substantial numbers of young for release, but also would immediately provide a safe guard for the species in the event the Meeteetse colony was overwhelmed by some mortal event. A disease, for example. An abundance of coyotes. Exceptionally

bad weather. There was no disagreement in 1982 that the Meeteetse colony was excruciatingly vulnerable. The field studies of black-footed ferrets would allow this general idea for a rescue to become gradually more and more specific. How many young ferrets could be taken each year for captive management without altering the number of adults in the Meeteetse colony? That was a key question for Tim Clark to address with substantial support from WCS. We agreed to another gambit, as well. Not quite able to accept that every ferret on every square mile of the vast range of this animal was ferret-free, we agreed to put up a reward of $5000 for anyone who could show a ferret to a wildlife biologist. I talked this through with Montana wildlife officers first, but the offer later spread to Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah and Nebraska. Surely, in all that territory, some cowboy somewhere would find a prairie dog colony still supporting ferrets, and would come to collect his reward. It never happened. In 1984, a diverse group of ferret enthusiasts assembled in Cheyenne, Wyoming. By now the Tim Clark team, and other scientists, had quantities of valuable new data that would allow a debate about ferret recovery to proceed with a measure of confidence. The state wildlife agency, Wyoming Game and Fish, hosted the meeting. I flew out, accompanied by Jim Doherty, the curator of mammals at the Bronx Zoo. Not only could Jim contribute to any discussion that might come up about husbandry of ferrets in manmade facilities, but he also happened to be familiar with almost every zoo in the country. The Bronx Zoo was prominent in the AZA, the American Zoo and Aquarium Association, and Jim was a recognized leader and authority within that body. Which meant that Jim was acquainted with a whole network of facilities, and an army of personnel, who might be able to help the ferret, depending on what was decided in Cheyenne. There was some tension in the large group even before we sat down. For a couple of years many of us had been writing letters and lobbying to get going with the captive breeding program. Tim was now confident of there being over 120 ferrets in the Meeteetse colony, and substantial numbers of youngsters were being produced, some of which could have been taken to establish breeding colonies. There was chatter about a ferret rescue, but there was no institutional motion to get it done. I sat down at a large round table with Tim Clark on my right and Jim Doherty on my left. In the room were federal officials, state agency people, veterinarians, field biologists and representatives of other non-governmental organizations. As the meeting opened, we were invited to introduce ourselves. It was conventional protocol for such gatherings; a moment to show your credentials, justify your presence at the table. WCS was recognized as a dominant supporter of the crucial field studies on ferrets, directed by Tim Clark, and as possessing exceptional competence with captive management issues, as represented by Jim Doherty. And sure enough, the discussions quickly turned to captive management as a means to save the ferret. There was no dissension. The sentiment was that we had to move, and we had to move fast. Both of my colleagues, Tim and Jim, were able to speak to this strategy, drawing from very different professional origins; Tim with hard data on ferret population size, demographics and ecology, and Jim

with the insights of how to rear little mustelids, and where they might be housed in the United States at reasonable cost. It was a satisfying moment for me as a representative of WCS. We on the staff take institutional pride in the Societys ability to bring a broad spectrum of expertise to bear on certain types of conservation challenges. Its part of our culture, as they say. We try to foster an interdisciplinary capability within the organization. Even as the ferret story was unfolding, Bill Conway, our director, was deeply immersed in the strategy to save the California condor. Captive propagation with subsequent, painstaking, release to the wild was the formula for that desperate recovery program. In China, our senior field scientist, George Schaller, studying the Giant panda in the shrinking Wolong Natural Reserve, was joined by the chief veterinarian of the Bronx Zoo, Emil Dolensek, to help design hospital facilities and so, upgrade the captive-management campaign for that cherished species. So, here I was with Tim Clark and Jim Doherty, and our little delegation may have had more technical potency, relevant to the ferrets recovery, than any other in the room. Musing on this circumstance, I momentarily lost track of the discussion in the room. A man from the Wyoming Game and Fish Department was on his feet, speaking. He was a good-looking guy in a well-tailored charcoal suit, cut in a Western style. A bead of piping snaked up his lapels. His pant cuffs draped narrowly over black cowboy boots. He was looking across the room, directly at me, it seemed, and I quickly focused my attention. He was saying, and we wont have any Easterners coming out here to tell us what to do with our ferrets. I glanced over at Jim. He rolled his eyes, but maintained his usual calm. I looked at Tim. His head was down. He was staring intently at a pencil on the table in front of him. Tim, I hissed. What just happened? Tim Clark lived and worked out here. He knew everyone in the room. He turned to me with an owlish gaze from behind thick glasses, and said quietly and with an improvised twang, He called you an Easterner. Thems fightn words. The chairman of the meeting, noticing the hubbub stirred up by the remarks of the man from Game and Fish, put on a grim face, tapped a water glass with his pen, and suggested a coffee break. The day went from bad to worse. By the close of the meeting, the WGF delegation made it clear that no ferret would ever leave Wyoming for the purposes of captive breeding; not to the federal Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland; not to the National Zoos captive breeding facility in Virginia; not to the Denver Zoo; and certainly not to the Bronx Zoo. Since there was no adequate breeding facility in Wyoming at the time, one would have to be built. The state agency was emboldened to make these pronouncements under Section 6 of the Endangered Species Act. The real tragedy, however, was that the federal agency responsible, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, did not step in and set things straight. That moment of deference to the state, of inaction by the federal government, is attributed by many scholars to be tied to the prevailing concept of New Federalism: Let the states do as they may. WGF denied itself access to a half dozen existing, expensive facilities, closed out the opportunity to work promptly to rescue the ferret, and created a

budgetary hurdle the cost of constructing a building in Wyoming that no one had any idea how to cross. At breakfast time on that spring day in Cheyenne, there was hope for the ferret. A loose-knit group of governmental and non-governmental entities could very easily have put together a sensible campaign to restore this critically endangered species. By sundown, the campaign was in a shambles. I felt the frustration as a body blow to my perception of civic order. The country, society, was being denied the chance to rescue the ferret. By Tims count that year, there were 129 black-footed ferrets on the prairies near Meeteetse. Fall came, the season when young ferrets might be live-trapped for intensive management purposes. No captures were made because of the stalemate induced by WGF, and the little colony was plunged into another Wyoming winter. Then came bad news. Sometime in the summer of 85 I had a message from Tim Clark. The ferrets were dying. He had counted only 58, and they now knew a disease had swept the colony. It was canine distemper, and it was still rampant. It was the worst-case scenario. In the vernacular of the population biologist, a stochastic eventa fire, a tornado, or, as in this case, a disease -- had materialized at Meeteetse. Stochasticity is the menace of any species restricted to a single, small, concentrated, population of individuals. Surely, now, the ferrets were in their last days. We monitored the frantic rescue efforts from the Bronx Zoo, relying on phone calls and news media. In October, field staff captured six ferrets and took them to a newly overhauled breeding facility at a place called Sybille Canyon. (That goal, at least getting a new building had been achieved by Wyoming Game and Fish.) The six animals were held together is a single pen, and, because one or more of them arrived infected with canine distemper, the others contracted the disease, and they all died. Now, only 20 or so ferrets were left, and the distemper was still among them. Another 6 ferrets were trapped, and this time, a breeding group was established at Sybille Canyon. In a note I wrote at the time, I called them the Sybille Six. A few more were caught, later. By early 1987, the ferrets were considered extinct in the wild; the Meeteetse colony was gone. According to Tim Clark, in the end, after a few deaths and breeding failures among the captives, the founding stock, the total parentage, of the black-footed ferret, was 7 animals. Their tissues contained the entire gene pool for the species. I stepped out of ferret affairs after that---went back east, one might say. But, like most American conservationists, I monitored the black-footed ferret recovery program with great interest. And, it has been impressive. Thousands of kits have been born to captive parents, and hundreds of ferrets have been released into the wild. At least 19 reintroduction sites in the western states, Canada and Mexico have been established, with strong evidence of success. That is, the reintroduced ferrets are hunting effectively, overwintering and breeding. All good news. Still, there is the lingering worry about the effects of the population bottleneck the species has suffered. With so few founding parents, will the new North American ferret population be able to adapt to the vagaries presented by nature and mankind as time goes by?