Black-Footed Ferrets Win a Reprieve
Federal, state and private agencies have committed $250,000 to maintain a captive breeding program for the rare black-footed ferret for one more year.
The funds mean that the program at the Sybille Wildlife Center in Wyoming will continue at least through the next breeding season. The program, which has boosted the ferret population from 18 to 400 in the past decade, had faced possible disbandment because funds to keep it going past October had dried up.
One of the rarest animals on Earth, the black-footed ferret was believed to be extinct until 1981, when a colony was found on a remote ranch near Meeteetse, Wyo. Eighteen were trapped alive before the colony was wiped out by distemper in the mid-1980s.
The creatures primarily have been bred at the Sybille center operated by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department north of Laramie, Wyo.
Less than 30 ferrets are believed to be alive in the wild, and the ferret is still considered the rarest mammal in North America.
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