Is The Forest Service Killing Prairie Dogs

Saving Species: The Black-Footed Ferret

past Karl Hess

Introduction
Regime Failure
Recovery: A Play in Three Acts
Obstacles to Recovery
Reforming the Recovery
Conclusions

The U.S. Biological Survey--bane of the black-footed ferret--spells its name out in dead prairie dogs in 1921. Despite the fact that the Endangered Species Act is supposed to protect the ferret, the agency's successor continues to kill prairie dogs--the ferret'southward sole source of nutrient--today.

Introduction

I hundred years ago, millions of black-footed ferrets thrived in the prairies of the Great Plains and the intermountain Westward. Past the stop of 1985, only ten were left. The ferret has become a archetype case of a species endangered by human activities.

Unlike species whose ecological relationships are complex and whose declines are puzzling, the black-footed ferret'south needs and the reasons for its disappearance are simple. The ferret lives almost exclusively on prairie dogs. Information technology eats prairie dogs, it feeds prairie dogs to its young, and it makes its dwelling house in prairie dog burrows. So, for the ferret, the survival equation is uncomplicated: Prairie dogs equal life; no prairie dogs equal extinction.

In the concluding decades of the nineteenth century, western ranchers heavily overgrazed the plains and mountain range. This actually improved prairie canis familiaris habitat. Prairie dogs cannot colonize in the dense grasses of ungrazed ranges, but with overgrazing prairie dog colonies grew to cover 700 million acres. Although no ane was counting at the time, blackness-footed ferret numbers besides increased to as many as half dozen million.

Growing prairie canis familiaris populations were a symptom of overgrazing. But a 1902 federal research report tragically confused cause and effect and blamed the effects of overgrazing on the prairie dogs. This put ranchers on the warpath against prairie dogs.

Past themselves, a few ranchers thinly scattered beyond the Due west probably could not have done much about prairie dogs. Ii Texas ranchers one time attacked a prairie dog colony with rifles. For two solid weeks they shot prairie dogs, spending thousands of bullets to kill as many as they could. At the end of that time they couldn't see that they had even made a dent in prairie dog populations.

Strychnine is more effective than bullets, and plowing more constructive nonetheless at eliminating prairie dog colonies. Using poisonous substance and plows, ranchers managed to reduce prairie dogs to about 20 percent of their celebrated range by 1916. Relying on their own resource, that might have been as much as they could or would do--especially since (as recent research reveals) the benefits to livestock of killing prairie dogs autumn curt of costs even on the most productive grasslands. Every bit range ecologist Dan Uresk constitute, "prairie dog control on rangelands in western Southward Dakota did non consequence in a positive increment in fodder production after 4 years."

But ranchers had a friend to help them in their crusade against prairie dogs: a friend named Uncle Sam. As long every bit Uncle Sam would pay, it wouldn't affair whether the benefits exceeded the costs. Many of the overgrazed lands were federal, so that'south where many of the prairie dogs were constitute. Since ranchers had to pay the authorities to utilize those lands after 1905, they convinced Congress that the government had an obligation to help them wipe out prairie dogs--on both public and private land.

The agency in charge of "decision-making" prairie dogs was the U.South. Biological Survey, a branch of the Section of Agronomics. As its proper noun suggests, its original mission was fairly benign: mapping plant communities and counting wild animals populations. But an important police of government is that an agency with a mission that has no constituency volition soon observe a constituency who will give it a new mission. Ranchers were the constituency, and the mission was to rid the range of predators and prairie dogs.

Congress gave the Survey its new mission in 1916. The Biological Survey attacked this mission with a vengeance, not to mention every poison, trap, and other animal control device mod scientific discipline could come with. In just four short years, it had eradicated prairie dogs from 47 1000000 acres, or nigh half of their remaining range. Past 1960, with the active assistance of the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Direction, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and even the Park Service, the agency had eliminated prairie dogs from all but nearly 2 per centum of their historic range.

An important police of ecology is that, when you lot get after a casualty species, the predators disappear first. With prairie dogs making upwards 95 percent of its diet, the ferret is an obligate associate of prairie canis familiaris colonies. This makes the ferret an indicator species for prairie dog habitat in the same way that the spotted owl is an indicator for old-growth habitat.

Biologists say that well over 100 species, including pronghorn and (at one fourth dimension) bison, find nutrient and shelter in areas colonized by prairie dogs. Many of these species, including the mount plover, the ferruginous hawk, and the swift fox, depend on prairie dog colonies every bit a critical function of their habitat. Several of these species are failing and may be threatened by continuing prairie canis familiaris eradication programs.

Although their range is limited, plenty of prairie dogs still survive. Only by 1940 remaining prairie dog colonies were and so small and and then far autonomously that the far less numerous ferrets were too few to class a feasible gene pool. Ferrets suffered from inbreeding and were highly susceptible to diseases such as plague and distemper.

Available information suggests that the ferret met current tests of an "endangered species" well before 1940. By 1973, when the Endangered Species Human activity was passed, biologists were calling the ferret "the rarest mammal in Due north America."

Authorities Failure

Up to this point, the ferret'due south issues seem to be just some other case of greedy and selfish people working in a free market place and conflicting with the natural earth. In fact, nigh all of the ferret'southward difficulties stem from government failure, not market failure.

Government mismanagement of the range led to the overgrazing that caused prairie dog populations to initially explode.
Poor regime research concluded that prairie dogs were the crusade, not an effect, of overgrazing.
After 1916, government subsidies destroyed 98 percent of western prairie canis familiaris colonies that had survived upward to that year.

If the problem really was just one of private greed, and then passage of the Endangered Species Act should have signaled a plough-around point for the ferret. Biologists knew that the ferret was endangered and they knew why.

Under section 7 of the act, the Biological Survey, Woods Service, and all other federal agencies should take immediately stopped killing prairie dogs. Under section 9 of the act, individual landowners who poisoned prairie dogs could accept been charged with "taking" any ferrets who depended on those prairie dogs for food. A recovery program could have promoted the spread of prairie dogs, and in turn, ferrets, across millions of acres of federal land.

That's not what happened. By 1973, the Biological Survey had been incorporated into the Fish & Wild fauna Service--the very same agency entrusted with saving the black-footed ferret. For another thirteen years, the Fish & Wild animals Service gave lip service to saving the ferret even as it went out and poisoned prairie dog colonies. Ranchers didn't have to adventure being charged with "taking" ferrets when they poisoned prairie dogs--they merely had to ask the agency in charge of protecting ferrets to do it for them.

In 1986, Congress--worried that the Fish & Wildlife Service was not eager plenty at its job of killing coyotes and prairie dogs--transferred the Service'due south animate being harm control program to the Section of Agronomics. Under that programme, every bit well as the Forest Service, Bureau of State Direction, and other federal agencies, prairie canis familiaris poisoning continues to this day.

Recovery: A Play in Three Acts

Instead of becoming an endangered species success story, the black-footed ferret recovery effort turned into a comedy of errors that would rival Seinfeld (and sometimes the Iii Stooges) if information technology weren't so tragic. Information technology is a comedy with a prologue and 3 acts.

The prologue begins in 1964, when biologists discover a pocket-sized population of blackness-footed ferrets in South Dakota. Extensive surveys place a total of 90 ferrets. Hoping to keep the animal from extinction, biologists monitor the population for 7 years. By 1971, the South Dakota ferrets are the last known wild ferrets in existence.

Simply the ferrets aren't doing well, and their issues are compounded by ascent tensions between federal agencies and surrounding landowners. So the Fish & Wildlife Service captures nine ferrets for a captive breeding program. The program gets off to a bad start when a vaccine meant to protect the ferrets confronting distemper immediately kills four of them.

At this signal, act I is heralded past passage of the Endangered Species Act of 1973. The ferret becomes one of the starting time species listed, and the Fish & Wildlife Service industriously begins to write a recovery programme. Despite the urgent nature of the problem, the plan is not finished until 1978.

Just a few pages long, the plan prescribes 5 basic steps:

Map the ferret'southward historic range;
Inventory current ferret habitat;
Estimate past and present ferret populations;
Protect existing ferret populations; and
Restock sometime habitat using captive-bred ferrets.

By 1978, step 2 is easy: Current habitat is near goose egg. But the Fish & Wild animals Service flunks step 4: The last-known population in Due south Dakota had disappeared. Step 5 is also botched: The five captive ferrets breed two litters, only all of the kits die. In 1979, the last captive ferrets also die.

The Fish & Wildlife Service spends the adjacent iii years looking for ferrets, to no avail. Every bit far as anyone knows, the black-footed ferret is extinct.

Act II opens in Meeteetse, Wyoming, a ranch community about 30 miles s of Cody. In 1981, a dog belonging to Lucille Hogg, possessor of a local cafe, brings to its owner a dead animal that Hogg doesn't recognize. She shows information technology to a friend, who shows it to a state wildlife manager, who recognizes it as a black-footed ferret.

Immediately, biologists begin combing the area, using a variety of search methods. They soon identify 61 ferrets living on 7,400 acres of prairie dog habitat.

In one of the biggest laughs of the human activity, Fish & Wildlife Service officials ingratiate themselves to the local populous past threatening to charge Lucille Hogg for letting her dog "take" an endangered species. Equally a upshot, ranchers clam up. The New York Zoological Society offers a $10,000 reward for confirmed ferret sightings, but state biologists say that no amount of money would have broken local silence about other possible ferrets. To this mean solar day, local biologists believe that more ferrets could have been found if ranchers had cooperated.

Otherwise, the Fish & Wildlife Service doesn't have the budget to do much about the ferrets, so information technology is happy to allow the Wyoming State Game & Fish Department have the atomic number 82. The country at to the lowest degree has a better relationship with ranchers, but it decides to practise fiddling other than monitor the local prairie domestic dog and ferret populations.

At first, things become well, and the 61 ferrets multiply to 129 by 1984. Some biologists urge the state to capture a few ferrets for convenance and as backup to the wild population. The land declines to do so until 1985, when biologists discover that sylvatic plague is decimating the Meeteetse prairie dog population. Worse, they soon learn that canine distemper is wiping out the ferrets.

In July, 1985, biologists find no new litters and only 58 alive ferrets. By October, the ferret population has fallen to 16. Biologists capture six of them and then, in 1986, some other dozen, including some from ii new litters. Biologists later determine that, during the winter of 1985-1986, the wild population savage to iv individuals. Act 2 closes with xviii ferrets in captivity and, equally far every bit anyone knows, none in the wild.

Human activity 3 begins with the Fish & Wildlife Service writing a new ferret recovery program. Completed in 1988, the plan calls for:

Breeding a captive population of 200 ferrets by 1991;
Releasing them in x or more locations; and
Protecting reintroduced populations and then that they abound to i,500 adults by 2010.

Ferrets are bred at Wyoming's Sybille Inquiry Facility and, later, at six zoos scattered beyond the continent. Captive breeding is more successful than in the 1970s, and past 1991 the agencies take a total of 320 ferrets.

Footstep 2 is more difficult, and to date biologists accept been able to notice just three of the planned ten places to release ferrets. Starting in 1991, biologists released 228 ferrets in southeastern Wyoming's Shirley Basin. Beginning in 1994, another 52 ferrets were released in Southward Dakota's Badlands. Finally, starting in 1994, 40 ferrets were released in Montana's Charles Chiliad. Russell Wildlife Refuge.

Act Three contains many slapstick scenes. A government worker transporting ferrets to a release point gets chilled by his vehicle'southward air workout. He turns it off--causing all of the ferrets in his care to die by heat stoke. A contractor capturing prairie dogs to feed convict ferrets manages to become a bunch that are infected with plague. Though many are dead, workers dutifully feed them to the ferrets--with the result that at least two dozen dice.

Despite these issues, a total of 304 ferrets accept been released into the wild. The captive convenance program has price more than $12 million, which averages around $40,000 per released animal. But hey--who counts dollars when you are talking about saving an endangered species?

The statistics become grimmer when we count the survival rates of released ferrets: less than 7 percent, or at virtually 20 animals. For those who insist on counting dollars, that'southward at to the lowest degree $600,000 per animal.

It turns out that raising ferrets in cages simply doesn't ready them to survive in the wild. They don't know, for example, to dodge into a burrow when they see a big animal headed their way. Dozens of released ferrets simply become a quick dinner for some lucky coyotes. It may be the well-nigh expensive dinner the coyotes e'er ate, simply that's okay with them because taxpayers paid for it.

Coyotes seem to be the undoing of all but two or three of the ferrets released in South Dakota. In Wyoming, simply ten of the 228 released ferrets survived to 1995. Worse, another outbreak of plague appears to have wiped out some 90 percent of the local prairie canis familiaris population. Near or all of the remaining ferrets are probably dead of starvation or from getting the plague from their prey.

The greatest success is in Montana, where nine of the forty released ferrets manage to avert coyotes for at least the get-go yr. The Fish & Wild animals Service plans to release more than ferrets in the area in 1996. In an ironic bear on, it asks the USDA animal harm control program to first kill all of the local coyotes.

Act III closes with the optimistic feeling that the show isn't over. The captive convenance program goes on, and several hundred ferrets are alive in zoos or the Sybille Facility. Spectators are more depressed past the agency'south failure to find more than than three sites, or to secure more survivors in the sites it has found. After all, neither the Endangered Species Act nor the Fish & Wild fauna Service'southward recovery plan contemplated saving species by turning them into zoo animals.

Obstacles to Recovery

As director of the Fish & Wild fauna Service's blackness-footed ferret recovery program, Peter Gober coordinates and oversees ferret convenance, release, and protection efforts. Even so he is starting to question the wisdom of putting so much endeavor into a species whose needs are then specialized that it may demand constant attention from people but to survive.

Gober fears that the ferret recovery program is nothing but a classic "Endangered Species Act knee joint-wiggle reaction" and he wonders if society has its priorities dislocated. Other experts similarly worry that, every bit Wyoming Game & Fish Section biologists Robert Oakleaf and Robert Luce say, the ferret has "a less than 50-50 hazard" of making information technology in the wild.

These people may be also pessimistic. We have proven that the ferret can be bred in captivity. But if the ferret is to be more than than merely a zoo piece, its protectors must overcome ii types of barriers to recovery: biological and political.

The first biological bulwark is predation. Ane Fish & Wildlife Service biologist, Randy Matchett, says taking ferrets out of cages and releasing them in the wild "is like turning a five-yr-old child out in the jungle." In fact, some of those that didn't get caught by coyotes only starved to death because they didn't know how to hunt for food.

One solution is to raise ferrets in a more natural surround rather than in cages. This surround could teach them to hunt and condition them to avoid predators. Matchett would also similar to erect a temporary electrical fence around release sites. This wouldn't provide consummate protection, just it could requite ferrets a risk to adjust to their new homes earlier they become picked off by coyotes.

Unfortunately, the value of these ideas is obscured past political pressure to impale coyotes. Ranchers see the ferret program as an opportunity to direct more dollars into coyote eradication. Under pressure from the land of Montana and Montana Senator Conrad Burns, the Fish & Wildlife Service decided to become for this idea.

In reality, coyote killing could do more harm than good. Whatsoever coyotes killed are probable to be replaced by other coyotes who move into the empty territory of the expressionless one. Since coyotes conduct distemper, and their fleas deport plague, killing coyotes may only increase the chances that ferrets and prairie dogs volition exist exposed to disease.

Disease remains an intractable problem even if complete coyote protection is possible. And an even more serious biological problem in the long run is the minor gene puddle of remaining ferrets. The eighteen Meeteetse ferrets captured in 1985 and 1986 were descended from merely five individuals. Ane of those individuals has bequeathed to recent generations of captive-bred ferrets such defects as kinked tails, jaw and tooth deformities, unmarried kidneys, and females with one-half their reproductive organs missing. Fifty-fifty if these defects are culled out, the tiny cistron pool may brand information technology difficult for reintroduced ferrets to suit to the wide range of ecology conditions that were inhabited by the original ferret population.

In the stop, only persistence and the experience of repeated trials will be needed to overcome the biological obstacles. But this makes the political obstacles specially frustrating, considering some of those obstacles stand up in the style of more than releases.

The Fish & Wildlife Service didn't option Shirley Basin, the Badlands, and the Russell Refuge because they were the best sites bachelor. In fact, the first site, Shirley Basin, was probably one of the poorest sites available. First, information technology was inhabited by white-tailed prairie dogs, whose population densities are typically half of their black-tailed prairie dog cousins. This means that the site is less likely to support a genetically feasible population of ferrets.

If that weren't bad enough, biologists knew that Shirley Basin had a long history of plague and distemper. Thus, the affliction that probably wiped out the last ten ferrets on the site probably would take gotten them all even if coyotes hadn't eaten the rest.

Despite these drawbacks, Shirley Bowl was picked for reasons of political expediency. Meliorate sites were available, including some on Forest Service country, but local ranchers and even the Forest Service objected to those sites. In fact, the white-tailed prairie domestic dog's low population density was a political point in Shirley Basin'due south favor because it meant local ranchers were less antagonistic to the prairie dogs.

Political objections have also prevented the expansion of the Badlands reintroduction into nearby Buffalo Gap National Grassland, even though this expansion was originally agreed to by Forest Service managers and local ranchers. Similar political problems have kept the Fish & Wild fauna Service from finding seven more release sites, as planned in the ferret's recovery plan.

These political problems are complicated by strains in the relationships betwixt state and federal wildlife and land management agencies. Federal officials accuse state wild fauna managers of maintaining cozy relationships with ranchers. State officials accuse federal managers of alienating local citizens. These tensions brand information technology nigh incommunicable to set funding priorities, which may exist one reason why millions have been spent on captive breeding while nearly zippo has been spent on habitat conservation.

Overriding all of this infighting is the fact that almost everyone is treating the symptoms, non the causes, of ferret reject. Biologists early on decided to focus on breeding and reintroducing ferrets rather than expanding ferret habitat. This may have been necessary when only eighteen animals existed, but meanwhile the USDA animal damage control plan, the Woods Service, and state agencies have continued to eradicate prairie dogs--often in locations near or side by side to proposed ferret reintroduction sites.

For example, i reintroduction site that virtually biologists considered superior to Wyoming'south Shirley Basin is in Campbell County, Wyoming. Since 1991, when reintroduction began in Shirley Basin, Campbell County has eradicated prairie dogs on at least fifty,000 acres of federal, state, and private land. It is nearly as if county officials decided to rid themselves of the prairie dog while they could--using land and federal funds, of course--in society to prevent whatever ferret reintroduction from ever taking place.

Ranchers might still want to impale prairie dogs if federal subsidies to eradication programs were eliminated. Only their tendency to do so would exist reduced even further if other federal grazing subsidies were concluded. These subsidies encourage overgrazing, which encourages prairie dog population explosions, which encourage ranchers to want to kill prairie dogs. Feel in Badlands National Park and various wildlife refuges has shown that stable prairie dog populations are compatible with grazing at rates that would be profitable to unsubsidized ranchers.

Reforming the Recovery

Then what must be done to promote recovery of the ferret and insure protection for all of the other species that depend on prairie canis familiaris habitat? The get-go rule is e'er to exercise no impairment . This means ending all federal and state subsidies to prairie dog command programs. Information technology also means ending federal subsidies to grazing in full general, which would lead to more bourgeois grazing regimes that are more compatible with prairie dog ecosystems.

A 2nd important rule should be for agencies to make better sense of their mission and funding priorities . With 300-plus ferrets in Sybille and various zoos, the species is, for the moment, out of danger. Instead of feeding those ferrets to coyotes, federal and state agencies should work towards habitat protection and expansion.

A third important goal is to become the support of local residents for endangered species protection and reintroductions. As loathe every bit environmentalists are to acknowledge information technology, this volition near certainly require revisions of the Endangered Species Human action to supercede punitive measures with incentives, particularly when dealing with individual land. Any short-term benefits that accrue to listed plants and animals through the threatening or taking of private belongings will be outweighed by long-term opposition to or interference with species recovery.

Some other mode to encourage private landowners to assist in species conservation is through the tax code. The federal inheritance tax makes information technology difficult to maintain ranches intact across generations. Reducing or eliminating this tax would assist prevent the subdivision of such ranches into "ranchettes." Wild fauna advocates could also encourage counties to requite landowners taxation breaks for conservation reserves.

Another modify that could promote prairie dog habitat would exist for states to make prairie dogs a game species. Prairie dog hunting is already such a popular sport in South Dakota that Forest Service officials reduced their prairie dog poisoning program to accommodate demands for more hunting.

For an private prairie canis familiaris, in that location may seem to be picayune difference between shooting and poisoning. But for the species as a whole, there is a vast difference. An emphasis on hunting rather than poisoning turns the management goal from prairie domestic dog eradication to sustaining and expanding viable populations of prairie dogs.

Managed sport hunting can benefit ranchers also as the prairie canis familiaris ecosystem. Montana researchers study that controlled shooting in a portion of the Buffalo Gap National Grassland slowed annual prairie dog colony expansion from xv percent to three pct. While this may seem to be a loss for the prairie dogs, they actually benefited because the Forest Service reduced its poisoning programme. Researchers as well noted that the shooting of prairie dogs generated an estimated $3.2 1000000 of annual income to the local economy.

In addition to hunting revenue, it may be possible for public land managers and private landowners to collect income from other prairie-domestic dog ecosystem recreation. Equally noted, several species of rare birds employ this ecosystem. Fees for wildlife viewing, wild animals photography, and other ecotourism would assist promote restoration efforts.

Conclusions

In less than a century, humans reduced the black-footed ferret from a population of millions of animals covering millions of acres to as few every bit ten individuals on one Wyoming ranch. This near extinction was almost solely due to poorly designed public policies--policies which, for the most part, remain in place today.

The Endangered Species Act was supposed to reverse this policy, simply it merely practical band aides that sometimes fabricated the situation worse. At nearly, government activity has forestalled the extinction of the black-footed ferret. That is quite an achievement given the many threats to the species. However, even that pocket-sized accomplishment is now threatened by agency budget reductions and antagonism to the law from local residents.

For these reasons, new strategies to save the ferret are imperative. These strategies should focus on three areas:

Setting funding priorities --Because no effort has been made to efficiently allocate resources, huge amounts of coin are being sunk in programs that have essentially zero chance of success. This includes both the program of surveying rights of way and other public lands for ferrets and the programme attempting to reestablish ferrets in the wild. Funding should exist reoriented to the one program that has been successful--the convict convenance of ferrets--and to improving that program so that ferrets are predator wise.
Ending disincentives for habitat protection --The captive breeding programme cannot produce a sustainable wild population of ferrets unless prairie-dog habitat is secured and expanded. This means eliminating all of the existing government programs and policies that requite landowners and public state users incentives to fragment or destroy such habitat--including incentives unintentionally built in to the Endangered Species Act.
Creating new incentives for wildlife protection --Given the right incentives, landowners and managers will be eager to protect wild animals and their habitat. Where necessary, such incentives tin can be created with biodiversity trust funds, game management, and like programs.

There are no miracle solutions to the predicament of the black-footed ferret. Its electric current state is the product of more than than a century of bad public policy. Only the current Congress seems willing to completely reevaluate that policy. Rather than resist such a reevaluation, endangered species advocates should join and promote it to insure that changes in the police force volition be all-time for wildlife, the land, and the people for generations to come.

Karl Hess (Khess4@aol.com) has a Ph.D. in ecology and is a senior associate with the Thoreau Institute and a frequent correspondent to Different Drummer.

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