The Globe and Mail
Saturday, July 4, 2009
by Sharon Oosthoek
Twenty-eight years ago, a Wyoming rancher’s dog carried a strange-looking dead animal home to its master.
The cream-coloured creature was about the size of a house cat, with a slim body and black feet, face and tail tip. Puzzled, the rancher took it to wildlife biologists, who were stunned to discover an animal thought extinct: a black-footed ferret.
Black-footed ferrets, born at the Toronto Zoo, peek out from their wooden burrow. (Courtesy, The Toronto Zoo)
Further examination revealed that the rancher’s property was home to a small, stable population of these ferrets. But six years later, disease cut their numbers to just 18 and panicked biologists raced to round up the remaining animals, rightly suspecting that they would never find others.
Now, the process is being reversed: This fall, the black-footed ferret will return to Saskatchewan, where it hasn’t been seen since the 1930s, when settlers converted prairie to farms, decimating the ferret’s prairie dog prey.
While the ferrets have already been reintroduced to Wyoming and other places in the United States and Mexico, this will mark a first in Canada. Most of the 40 animals to be released in Grasslands National Park will come from the Toronto Zoo, which runs one of six captive breeding programs set up across North America two decades ago.
But before being given their freedom, the animals must receive something crucial to their success in the wild: survival training.
The black-footed ferrets have to go to boot camp.